Written by Carolyn Webb, Program Director, Farm to Cafeteria Canada
“Although current food systems have largely kept pace with population growth, ensuring sufficient caloric intake for many, they are the single most influential driver of planetary boundary transgression.”
And yet: “In this moment of increasing instability, food systems still offer an unprecedented opportunity to build the resilience of environmental, health, economic, and social systems, and are uniquely placed to enhance human wellbeing while also contributing to Earth-system stability.”
These two quotes from the introduction to the EAT-Lancet Commission report offer a warning as well as the critical insight that we can shift the planetary crises we’re facing if we transform the food we eat and the systems that produce it. The report, released in October 2025, was written by 24 leading researchers in health, sustainability, social justice, and policy from 17 countries around the world. It builds on the widely-acclaimed 2019 EAT-Lancet report by speaking to how current diets and practices are transgressing planetary boundaries, and it provides recommendations that focus on simultaneously supporting greater human and planetary health as well as justice.
The report’s authors researched and quantified the food system’s impact on all nine planetary boundaries and concluded that food is the largest cause of planetary boundary transgression for five out of the six boundaries that humans have breached (land system change, biosphere integrity, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, and the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change). It then states that “no safe solution to climate and biodiversity crises is possible without a global food systems transformation.”
One of the EAT-Lancet’s primary recommendations to reverse these trends is for the adoption of the Planetary Health Diet, an evidence-based flexible diet rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes that supports optimal health while also reducing the environmental impacts of most current diets.
Relevant to Farm to Cafeteria Canada’s work, the EAT-Lancet report offers close to a page of discussion (panel 10) on the potential of school meals to reverse these trends: “School meals are increasingly recognised as a cost-efficient investment for governments to advance multiple policy objectives, including health and nutrition, education, social protection, and agriculture. Well designed and strategically implemented school meal programmes (…) can have a profoundly positive effect, particularly on the most vulnerable children and adolescents, by improving attendance and academic performance, and reducing dropout rates. (…) Sustainable school meals, coupled with consistent and action-oriented food education, can empower future generations by fostering healthier and more sustainable food habits at an age where lifelong dietary preferences and social attitudes are formed and carried into adulthood.” The report also articulates that sustainable school meal policies can promote more sustainable production, climate resilience and other benefits that support more sustainable and equitable food systems.
In short – school meals can be a key driver of the food system transformation we need if these programs are planned intentionally and focus on sustainability.
The report recommends a number of key policy strategies relating to school meals:
- Provide nutrient-rich menus that are predominantly plant-based
- Provide a stable market to source food from small local farms and distributors that use sustainable and ecological intensification practices
- Reduce food loss and waste
- Provide action-oriented food and climate education so that future generations have the knowledge they need to make sustainable choices
School meal programs were also highlighted in two of the report’s recommended solutions as initiatives that could support health, environment and justice:
- Solution 2 – Protect and promote healthy, traditional diets; Action 4 – Recognise and include traditional healthy foods and diets in food-based dietary guidelines and public procurement programmes (eg, school meal programmes)
- Solution 8 – Recognize and protect marginalised groups; Action 22 – Procure and implement healthy and sustainable meals in schools and other institutions – (supports health, environment and justice)
In summary, the EAT-Lancet report provides a loud and urgent warning call about the unsustainability of our current food system for human and planetary health, and it also shares practical approaches whereby our food system can better support human wellbeing and the health of the planet, including a focus on school meals to support this transition. The report offers hope that, although we are facing many challenges with our current approach to producing and consuming foods, food system change can help solve our interlinked climate, biodiversity, health and justice crises and school meals are a big and integral piece of the puzzle.
Access more EAT-Lancet news and resources here.
