THE ROLE OF RETAIL TO SUPPORT A SHIFT TOWARDS PLANET-BASED DIETS

Individual preferences and circumstances play a role in informing food choices, but decisions are highly shaped by our food environments – like supermarkets – and factors beyond the consumer’s control, such as availability, affordability, accessibility and marketing.

Food retailers are crucial gatekeepers on both sides of the supply chain, working with suppliers and interacting directly with consumers. By supporting consumers to adopt healthy and sustainable diets alongside changes to their supply chains, retailers can greatly reduce the environmental impact of our food system.

Retailers must be prepared to adapt their sales strategies to achieve both their own sustainability goals and science-based targets and contribute to global goals. This includes promoting products that align with sustainable dietary choices. In countries where animal-based food consumption exceeds health recommendations and planetary boundaries, food retailers can lead the way by rebalancing their sales of animal-based and plant-based foods.

Retailers in countries that over-consume animal-based food can play a key role in the transition to planet-based diets by promoting plant-based foods and reducing reliance on animal-based products.

The Planet-Based Diets retailer methodology provides a clear, step-by-step framework for retailers to measure and report their animal- versus plant-based sales, progressively enhancing their data collection and reporting capabilities to support a transition to more sustainable and healthy diets.

This methodology helps retailers to align their sales with global sustainability goals and support the shift to a more sustainable food system.

To accommodate retailers’ varying levels of data availability, data management approaches and resources, we propose a stepwise approach to get started, set goals and measure progress toward planet-based diets.

While transitioning sales of protein-rich foods toward a greater proportion from plant-based sources is essential, it is also necessary to include broader strategies to shift toward a healthy, sustainable, plant-rich diet encompassing all food groups.

• Measure balance of animal- and plant-based sales for protein products
• Measure animal/plant split on ingredient level of own-brand composite protein products
• Measure animal/plant split of all food items