The global context has shifted since 2019, when the EAT–Lancet Commission published its first report on the Planetary Health Diet (PHD), a global reference diet based on the best available science that supports optimal health outcomes. In six years, the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical instability and soaring food prices have increased existing vulnerabilities.
Released in October 2025, the updated planetary health diet is compatible with many foods, cultures, dietary patterns, traditions, and individual preferences. And according to the new data, a shift to the PHD could avert approximately 15 million deaths per year by providing nutritional adequacy and diminishing the risks of non-communicable diseases.
Towards a fair food system
While the first Commission defined food group ranges for a healthy diet and identified the food system’s share of planetary boundaries in 2019, the updated findings were complemented with an analysis of the social foundations for a just food system, integrating new data and perspectives on distributive, representational, and recognitional justice.
- Distributive justice involves the fair distribution of important resources, opportunities, or capabilities (eg, healthy food, decent wages, and a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment) and the fair allocation of benefits and burdens.
- Representational justice concerns decision-making and power, including formal and fair policy-making processes, and broader societal decision-making processes. This dimension of justice requires a fair distribution of power, the protection of key freedoms, and political voice and representation, including meaningful participation by those most affected by injustice.
- Recognitional justice manifests in the structures and norms of society, and recognises a diversity of intersecting identities and experiences that are shaped by cultural, legal, historical, and spatial contexts; recognitional justice involves people from all social groups being able to participate as equals.
Climate KIC CEO, Kirsten Dunlop, is a member of the EAT Advisory Board. She says: “The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission report builds the evidence for food transformation that can and must be equitable: protecting farmers’ livelihoods, respecting culture and ensuring access to healthy nutrition for all. We cannot afford to think of food and nature as sectoral issues; they are the connective tissue linking climate, biodiversity, health and justice. Today, the world needs integrated innovation and governance across policy, finance, and enterprise to restore the systems on which our survival depends. We need to invest in the food-environment-climate nexus as the cornerstone of health and resilience, and to do so with steady nerves, justice and imagination.”