Sustainable eating: let us make it happen!

When it comes to sustainable eating, the question isn’t “Why?” anymore - but “How?”, and most importantly, “When?”.

The numbers are there, and they’re undisputable: our food system accounts for almost a third of the global greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity. And all of this while we are ?only? 8 billion human beings on Earth: we could well be 10 billion by 2050 – in other words, by tomorrow. As of today, 800 million people suffer from hunger around the world. In France, the number of people relying on food aid has tripled in ten years, according to a study published this year by the French Food Bank; yet a third of the food we produce is wasted. We are facing untenable pressures that need to be resolved urgently.

Food is at the core of our survival, and at the heart of our lives. It is first and foremost a means of sustenance, and at the same time it is way more than that. It’s a human bond, a matter of health, a social issue. And above all, it is one of our strongest and most intimate ties to the planet. As I often say, the future of humanity will largely be played out on our plates. But as a matter of fact, food isn’t, or insufficiently, on top of the political and economic agenda, compared to reducing energy consumption and air pollution.

Yet nowadays, there is a global awareness of the urgent need to change our eating habits. Across all generations and all income categories, nearly 8 out of 10 citizens (79%) believe that adopting more sustainable behaviors is urgent, according to the Sodexo-Harris Interactive Sustainable Food Barometer, which was revealed on Monday December 11*. But a third of those interviewed believe that changing their eating habits requires efforts and that it is difficult to obtain sustainable products.

So how do we turn a society full of good intentions into a society that is ready for action?

Because we serve 80 million consumers in 45 countries every day, we believe, most humbly, that we have the means and the responsibility to contribute to meeting these challenges by mobilizing our entire ecosystem. Alone, we can do nothing. With our suppliers, we promote local and sustainable agricultural practices, and the development of short-distance sourcing. We train our chefs and teams to design new sustainable recipes, with the aim of labeling 70% of our main dishes ?low-carbon? by 2030. We optimize energy usage on our client sites. And finally, we are stepping up our fight against food waste, which we aim to halve by 2025.

Through all this, our touchstone is that the number one challenge in changing our eating habits is to make sustainability desirable. To be adopted by as many people as possible, sustainable food must be pleasurable food. With one true conviction: that our collective ability to embrace profound changes in our eating habits will depend on the availability of accessible options that are good for our health, good for the planet, and quite simply... good.

* Exclusive Sodexo/Harris Interactive study conducted in July 2023 with a sample of more than 5,000 people in Brazil, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

This open letter was first published in French daily newspaper Le Monde on December 7, 2023.