The way we use our land and the food we put on our plates might seem like separate concerns, but these systems are fundamentally intertwined.
Until now, nutritionists have been focused only on improving diet quality while sustainability professionals have worked to reduce the environmental impacts of the food system, including through land use. Treating these challenges as separate issues misses a crucial truth: the land that grows our food is the same land that must sustain our ecosystems.
Many major dietary shifts required for human health—increasing diverse plant-based foods, reducing unhealthy ultra-processed foods, and moderating processed and red meat consumption—are also changes needed for planetary health. These choices ultimately determine how much land is allocated to monocultures, livestock production, or diverse, nature-friendly regenerative farming.
The Health-Land Paradox
The UK currently produces around 60% of the food we consume—a figure that appears reassuring until closely examined. However, we depend heavily on imports for fresh produce and essential nutrition. Even as British fields grow wheat and sugar beet, we rely on international supply chains for many fruits and vegetables—our major dietary sources of vitamins A and C.
Meanwhile, our national diet remains dominated by foods that contribute to poor health – excessive high-fat, salt, and sugar products, alongside over-consumption of carbon and land-intensive foods in certain population groups.
The consequences of this disconnection are stark. Poor diet has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of preventable death globally, responsible for one in five deaths. In parts of the UK, like Bradford where I live, one in three children leave primary school with obesity, likely due to BiteBack 2030's findings that unhealthy food options are purposefully targeted towards school children, and 11,000 people are hospitalised each year due to malnutrition across the UK.
So the question isn't whether we have enough food; it's about whether citizens have access to the foods to protect their health. And that access depends in part on how we use our land.
Reshaping Our Food Environment
People make approximately 200 food decisions daily, but rarely in a vacuum. Our choices are shaped by availability, affordability and marketing – the "food environment" that surrounds us. With 70 million people in the UK navigating these decisions every day, shifting toward healthier, more sustainable dietary patterns requires transforming these environments at scale.
Retail As A Catalyst
Over 90% of people buy food to prepare at home from supermarkets, giving retailers extraordinary influence over national nutrition. Progressive retailers are beginning to set basket-level health and sustainability targets—check out Lidl, Ahold Dalhaize, and Rewe. This shift has the potential to directly impact land use patterns and create demand for diverse foods with lower environmental impacts.
Digital Platforms: The New Gatekeepers
Online services offer even greater potential to shape purchasing behaviour by curating and promoting brands that align with health and sustainability goals. For example, customer-facing digital interfaces could highlight products from nature-friendly agriculture systems, lower-carbon SKUs, and healthy food choices.
Policy As Structural Reform
Government intervention remains essential. For example, the National Planning Framework that gives local authorities the power to restrict fast-food outlets near schools, will reduce exposure to unhealthy meals and industrially produced meat. Bringing with it a raft of health and sustainability co-benefits. We need much more of this.
The Path Forward
Creating a food system that nourishes both population health and environmental sustainability requires integrated thinking across traditionally separate domains.
The cycle is clear: healthier diets rely on healthier land, and healthier land depends on the choices we make about our food. By recognising these connections, we can better understand the interdependencies in our approach to public health and land management.
Only then can we build a truly sustainable and nourishing food system that connects people and the planet.
Sources + Further Reading
BBC (24 June 2024). Council collecting data to curb childhood obesity. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511dne4x65o
BDJ Team (2019). Bad diets killing more people globally than tobacco, study finds. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41407-019-0083-9
GOV.UK (7 February 2025). National Planning Policy Framework. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-planning-policy-framework--2
GOV.UK (11 July 2024). UK Food Security Index 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-food-security-index-2024/uk-food-security-index-2024
GOV.UK (11 December 2024). United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024: Theme 4: Food Security at Household Level. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024-theme-4-food-security-at-household-level?utm_source=chatgpt.com#sub-theme-2-access-to-food-shops
The Times (10 July 2023). Thousands of people admitted to hospital with malnutrition. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/times-health-commission-thousands-of-people-admitted-to-hospital-suffering-from-malnutrition-n23hqgzjr?region=global
Wansink B, Sobal J. Mindless eating: the 200 daily food decisions we overlook. Environ Behav. 2007;39:106–23. doi: 10.1177/0013916506295573.
