Paul Brereton

Food production and consumption impact both human and planetary health. Clearly conveying how meals and diets influence nutritional adequacy and environmental sustainability is essential for informed decision-making among consumers. This systematic review identifies and examines existing food-based indices that classify or rank meals and diets based on both nutritive value and environmental impact, that the authors termed Nutritive and Environmental Combined Indices (NECIs). Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, six bibliographic databases were searched in August 2025 using four search concepts: nutrition, environment, index, and meal/diet. Studies assessing both nutritive value and environmental impact of meals or diets, published between January 2009 and August 2025, were included. Two independent reviewers screened studies and extracted data on NECI characteristics. The review protocol was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42024537149). Twenty-five NECIs, presenting 27 methodological approaches, were identified: six specific to meals, nine for diets, and ten offering scope to be applied to either. Nutritive and Environmental Combined Indices varied widely in scoring methods, with 13 different nutritional and six different environmental scoring approaches. Presentation formats also differed: 19 used a single integrated metric, four reported scores in parallel, and two used both. Additionally, 12 NECIs considered other dimensions of sustainability, primarily economic (n = 10) followed by socio-cultural (n = 6). Among integrated NECIs, variations were observed in dimension weighting, methodological approaches, and ranking criteria. A strength of this review is its focus on NECIs beyond individual food products, assessing their applicability to meals and diets. The review synthesises factors such as nutritional and environmental scoring methodologies, functional units, system boundaries, composite scoring techniques, weighting approaches, index scoring frameworks, and databases used. However, significant methodological variation among NECIs posed challenges for direct comparison. These findings provide a foundation for the development of standardised NECIs, supporting public health efforts to promote healthy and sustainable meal and diet choices.

There is a need to develop a commonly agreed approach that describes a food’s nutritive value and environmental impact that can be used to inform consumer choice. A new single index, the ‘Sus-Health Index’, is presented. The index was co-created in conjunction with a range of stakeholders drawn from policy, industry and consumer representation groups. The index is a product of existing nutrition and environmental indices, using a composite indicator methodology, and can be presented quantitatively as a numeric value or qualitatively on a categorized, colour coded, scale ‘A (best)–E (worst)’. The index was applied to a dataset of food products and meals, and its sensitivity and applicability were assessed using a Monte-Carlo simulation. The results indicate that the Sus-Health scale represents a pragmatic indicator of a food or meal’s combined nutritional and environmental value and could be used to help inform consumer food choices. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Transforming terrestrial food systems for human and planetary health’.

Current food production and consumption practices are impacting both human and planetary health. Though these challenges are multifaceted, shifting to healthy dietary choices from sustainable food systems is one solution. Food-based labelling is a common public-health strategy aimed at influencing consumption practices, primarily displaying front-of-pack nutrition labelling to encourage healthier choices. Due to the dual impact of food on human and planetary health there is a growing need to additionally include environmental impact information. However, this potentially conflicting information could overwhelm consumers, necessitating a simplified approach that combines both nutritive and environmental values. Previous work has identified existing models, termed sustainable food profiling models, for labelling of individual food products based on their environmental impacts and nutritive value. Foods are rarely eaten in isolation and are often consumed as composite meals, which aggregate to diets. Therefore, it is important to identify indices that exist to assess or rank meals and diets according to their nutritional and environmental impacts. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 guidelines, our systematic review protocol was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) on 01 May 2024 (PROSPERO registration ID = CRD42024537149). In the present protocol the methodology to identify and review existing food-based indices for the assessment of nutritive value and environmental impact of meals and diets and their intended public health purpose is described. Our primary research questions are: (i) what food-based indices assessing nutritive value and environmental impact exist for classification or ranking of meals or diets? and (ii) what are the methods used to create, and the key characteristics of, these indices?. The results are expected to increase understanding of, and highlight the variation in, the creation of combined measures for the assessment of nutritive value and environmental impact for meals and diets. Additionally, findings can be used to inform researchers, business, and policy actors on future approaches for labelling foods, meals, or diets in a way that supports healthy and sustainable meal choices and diets.

The organoleptic assessment (Panel test) is the only procedure within the official methods for determining the quality of virgin olive oils that involves an expert panel. There is an urgent need for analytical methodology that can reliably measure volatile compounds in virgin olive oils that is capable of supporting and anticipating the official Panel test. For this reason, a new method based on solid‐phase microextraction–gas chromatography with the choice of two possible detectors (FID or MS) was subjected to a large international interlaboratory validation study. The study involved a two‐stage process: first, a pretrial phase in which 7 participants were exposed to the method for the first time to identify any initial problems with the methodology; then, a formal validation stage (trial proper), which involved 20 laboratories from Europe, USA, Japan and China. The performance of the different detectors was investigated. While both methods have advantages, the method using FID provided better results for 11 compounds, in terms of reproducibility, compared to MS. This information will allow to implement the method with accurate information of the method performance depending on the detector used.Practical Applications: This study provides information from an interlaboratory validation of a method for measuring volatile compounds in virgin olive oils conducted with laboratories (from industry and academia) working in the olive oil sector. The information on the expected analytical errors in the determination of each volatile compound is necessary to apply this method for supporting the official Panel test (sensory analysis). The SPME‐GC‐MS/FID methods proposed in this work can be used for the internal quality control of a company/distributor/quality control laboratory and could also be used in cases of difficult/contradictory organoleptic assessment, or to confirm results from sensory panels in cases of disputes/disagreement (Reg. EU 2022/2105).

The current food chain both contributes to, and is affected by, climate change. While GHG emissions and emissions to water and soil are a problem for the whole food chain, the majority of such emissions and the major solutions to them can be found in the farming and land use sector. The farming system needs to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt its supply chain to cope with climate change. A broad variety of payment tools have been proposed to motivate farmers and landowners to take certain actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage the protection or restoration of natural resources. The protocol described here (OSF preregistration https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/STGQ6) outlines the methodology for a systematic review to explore how financial mechanisms such as green bonds can provide incentives to agri-food sector to support environmental sustainability and ecosystem service delivery through land-use change. Our primary research question is: how do financial mechanisms incentivize land restoration? Studies will be categorized according to the types of financial mechanisms, their characteristics, methods of land restoration and their impact on mitigating agri-food footprint. The results are expected to increase our understanding about the design of financing tools currently used to accelerate nature restoration. Moreover, they will inform us about the effectiveness of deploying such tools on rural communities, food companies and landowners.

Historically, food fraud was a major public health concern which helped drive the development of early food regulations in many markets including the US and EU market. In the past 10 years, the integrity of food chains with respect to food fraud has again been questioned due to high profile food fraud cases. We provide an overview of the resulting numerous authoritative activities underway within different regions to counter food fraud, and we describe the guidance available to the industry to understand how to assess the vulnerability of their businesses and implement appropriate mitigation. We describe how such controls should be an extension of those already in place to manage wider aspects of food authenticity, and we provide an overview of relevant analytical tools available to food operators and authorities to protect supply chains. Practical Application : Practical Application of the provided information by the food industry in selecting resources (guidance document, analytical methods etc.)