Excerpts from the introduction to the guide by Marinke van Riet, Chief Weaver, Healthy Food Healthy Planet:
- In September 2022, 25 change-makers from across eight European countries convened for three days on a farm outside of Berlin. The reason? To brew on where Healthy Food Healthy Planet as an emerging Pan-European movement needs to go next.
- It was our first in-person event, having worked online for over two years, co-creating a strategy reflecting the voices and perspectives of over 120 different organisations. In our midst in Berlin were dietitians, doctors, policy-makers, climate change campaigners, animal welfare and food equity activists, funders, farmers, and artivists, united by a single demand: healthy, just and sustainable food environments, starting with rebalancing animal-sourced foods.
- This guide, championed by Eating Better, showcases national and local level examples – where the ingredients for a successful recipe starts. Because together our impact is more powerful and inevitable is part of our newly found purpose. We can only address this enormous challenge together, civil society and funders alike – locally, nationally, regionally and globally.
From the Executive Summary:
- Our food system is unsustainable. It’s pushing our warming planet way beyond its limits and driving obesity, preventable disease and food scarcity. Thankfully, adopting healthier, sustainable diets on a wide scale is a main priority for civil society. There’s no clear solution; complicated problems require a vast range of groups and people sharing their knowledge.
- Many organisations across Europe have realised it’s more effective to tackle complex problems together to pool resources and expertise and make sustainable dietary change. We’ve spoken to a diverse range of organisations and individuals working on healthy and sustainable diets, across Europe about collaborations. In the spirit of collaboration, we want to share with you what we’ve found. We hope those involved and interested in collaborating for dietary change will find it useful and inspiring.
‘We started this project to bring together our learning from the past 9 years of Eating Better. But in doing so, we found that there is much to learn from collaborations elsewhere in Europe. It proved again to us that working across silos and within national food cultures is critical for making progress towards more healthy and sustainable eating.’
– Simon Billing Executive Director Eating Better