How we should eat to improve health and environment

Eva Warensjö Lemming is a senior lecturer at the Department of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics and researcher at the Department of Surgical Sciences, Medical Epidemiology. She has formed part of the working group that has produced the new and updated nutritional recommendations.

“We have been working on this for nearly five years. The National Food Agency is now getting involved and will update Swedish dietary advice based on our report.”

Since 1980, the Nordic countries have produced joint recommendations updated every eight years. “This time, the recommendations were expanded,” explains Warensjö Lemming. “In the beginning, this involved recommendations about nutrients and energy, but now they also include different food groups, dietary patterns and sustainability. These are thus the broadest and most comprehensive recommendations to date.”

Extensive research under way

Expertise has grown around the connections between diet and health thanks to extensive ongoing research. At the same time, the perspective has broadened from examining individual nutrients to including the food we eat, food groups and even dietary patterns.

“Food not only includes nutrients but also other bioactive substances, and taken together these substances have a synergistic effect. The effects of a type of food or an entire diet are therefore much larger than the individual components,” explains Warensjö Lemming.

Sustainability has also been added into the assessment at the request of the Nordic Council of Ministers. This focuses in particular on environmental sustainability and how consumption affects the environment. For example, plant-based food is recommended together with a reduction in the amount of red meat from 500g to 350g per week.

“We’ve assessed different parameters. CO2 equivalent is an important aspect, such as reducing meat consumption. Other parameters include nitrogen emission, water consumption and land exploitation.”

Many comments

The recommendations are based upon a systematic literature review. A range of background and review articles have been written on the subject, all of which have been openly accessible via the website. Several hundred researchers were involved in this.

“One of the key words was ‘transparency’, so we published all of the articles we used as a basis. We received a particularly large number of viewpoints on our ‘summary report’ – between 250 and 300 comments. We also received comments about sustainability, different nutrients and food groups, however. All of these comments will be published this autumn.”

The recommendations are set to have a major impact over the coming years. For example, they will form the basis of keyhole labelling of healthy food in shops, and it is the National Food Agency’s dietary advice that governs which food is served in schools and within elderly care.

No advice against ultra-processed food

One issue that has arisen is why the new recommendations do not advise against ultra-processed food, despite the studies showing its negative effect on human health. This is due to the fact that the definition of ultra-processed food does not only include unhealthy food,” explains Warensjö Lemming.

“In the studies, a definition of ultra-processed food is used that also includes food that is healthy, such as bread that we purchase in the shops. It feels a little odd to advise against bread, and we advise against eating unhealthy food in any case. We have recommendations for various food groups, for example that we should not be eating foods high in sugar, salt or fat.”

Annica Hulth