University of Oxford
11a Mansfield Rd
OX1 3SZ
UK
4th March 2025
4 minutes read
A new research initiative, the THRIVING Food Futures project, has been awarded funding by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). This innovative research hub is a partnership of the Department of Biology’s HESTIA and FoodMetric projects and the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, which aims to design and evaluate new food policies to support healthy, sustainable diets across the UK. As well as helping the country meet its legal Net Zero targets, sustainable diets can address public health issues such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and health inequalities.
The food we eat is currently responsible for one quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and, without significant change to our diets, the UK cannot meet its climate commitments. Encouragingly, diets that are good for the planet, such as those rich in fruit, vegetables, and cereals, and low in red and processed meat, are also beneficial for health. However, progress towards policy change has been stalled by two key areas: a perceived lack of public support and a lack of real-world evidence about the effectiveness of potential policies.
THRIVING Food Futures aims to overcome these challenges by working with a wide range of stakeholders, including academics, policymakers, industry representatives, and civil society groups. The project will focus on designing policies that transform the food system to support healthy, sustainable diets for all. Public engagement is central to this mission, and community panels will ensure that a diverse range of public perspectives are considered throughout the research process.
THRIVING will drive change in several ways:
- Policy options: The team will conduct a comprehensive review of international food policies, alongside input from policymakers and industry experts, to develop a broad range of options that could support healthier, more sustainable diets.
- Public support: In five locations across the UK, citizen juries will help the researchers gauge which of the proposed policies are most acceptable to the public, ensuring that any changes reflect the values and preferences of the wider population.
- Food profiling model: A Nutrient and Environment Profiling Model will be developed to categorise foods based on their nutritional content and environmental impact. This model will guide policy decisions by identifying which foods are both unhealthy and unsustainable.
- Digital policy trials: The team will create novel digital tools, such as smartphone apps, to simulate real-world shopping environments. These tools will allow for large-scale testing of the proposed policies without relying on industry partnerships. The trials will measure how these policies impact food choices and sustainability.
Dr Joseph Poore said:
“This project will provide much needed evidence for our transition to sustainable food. It is exciting that our data platform – HESTIA – will be providing the agricultural and environmental data to a range of interventions designed to change behaviours and inform policy.”
Professor Dame EJ Milner-Gulland said:
“It’s great to be part of such an interdisciplinary team doing research that can really make a difference to the sustainability of our food system. Food is such a key part of people’s lives, and this project works with communities across the country. The FoodMetric tool links information on nutritional and environmental outcomes of different menu choices, to help people with their food choices, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it can be used within this new project.”
This ambitious project is part of a new wave of transdisciplinary research hubs funded by UKRI and NIHR, designed to support transformative change. The THRIVING Food Futures project will not only provide valuable real-world evidence but also develop tools and policy maps that can be used beyond the life of the project.
This blog was originally published at https://www.biology.ox.ac.uk/article/tackling-healthy-sustainable-diets-and-net-zero-goals-with-new-thriving-project
Author
E.J. Milner-Gulland is Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford. Previously she was Professor of Conservation Science at Imperial College London, and she has also held lectureships in Resource Economics and Mathematical Ecology. Her PhD, at Imperial College London, was on the wildlife trade, with a focus on ivory, rhino horn and saiga antelopes. Her research group, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, undertakes a wide range of research, outreach and engagement projects, on five continents and in both marine and terrestrial settings. These include developing and applying methods for understanding, predicting, and influencing human behaviour in the context of local resource use in developing countries, and working with businesses to improve their environmental and social sustainability. Her team also works on controlling the illegal trade in wildlife and on designing, monitoring and evaluating conservation interventions in order to improve their effectiveness. She aims to ensure that all the research in her group is addressing issues identified by practitioners, and is carried out collaboratively with end-users, and builds the capacity of young conservationists, particularly in developing countries. She is the founder and chair of the Saiga Conservation Alliance and has launched a number of initiatives which aim to change the real-world conversation around conservation, including the Conservation Hierarchy approach to meeting a global vision of restoring nature and the Conservation Optimism movement. She is the Chair of the UK Government's Darwin Expert Committee and a Trustee of WWF-UK
Finally, I am passionate about the conservation ecology of the saiga antelope in Central Asia, and co-founded the Saiga Conservation Alliance in 2006.
Author
I am interested in furthering our understanding of the environmental impact of agriculture, and in building policy and consumer interventions to mitigate this impact. I graduated with an MA and MPhil in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge, where I now run their annual Denman Lecture series. Following this I worked for 4 years at a leading strategy consultancy on projects addressing resource allocation, growth and profitability.