“Our food system is broken.” Five words that we have heard countless times at countless conferences in recent times. From campaigners. From consultants. From academics. From caterers. From manufacturers. From supermarkets. And now from Jonathan Davies.
However, at the Sustainable Foods 2026 conference, held last week in London, Levy’s CEO added something that should have made everyone sit up and listen.
He said: “Most people have crap diets and we are forcing farmers to make bad decisions and polluting our land and water. All companies need to change.”
Music to the ears of those who have been pushing for such change – for true transformation of food systems. And a striking change of tone from that being beaten by the likes of former Sainsbury’s boss Justin King at the conference.
King, on a panel with Davies to discuss ‘What drives consumer behaviour and choices within F&D?’, seemed to lay the blame at the doors of consumers.
“We think radical change is around the corner … but mostly it’s not,” said King. And if people want higher animal welfare, lower environmental impacts, and more convenience, they will have to pay more for it: “There is this fiction that people can have all those choices with the 10% they spend on food,” he explained.
Thirty minutes was certainly not enough time to get into the weeds at the bottom of that particular can of worms. There was the usual private sector puffery, a Defra minister who said nothing of note, and some tasty soundbites relating to ultra-processed foods and the rise of GLP-1s – thanks in no small part to Henry Dimbleby.
As the author of the 2020 national food strategy for England and now MD at Bramble Partners, put it: in a world of increasing use of appetite-suppressants almost everyone will think differently about food, and think more carefully about what they eat.
That is no bad thing. Supermarkets are already reformulating and producing ranges to suit those after ‘nutrient-dense’ hits to sate their less frequent hunger pangs. Sales of yogurt have rocketed, said Cécile Beliot-Zind, CEO at Bel Group; sales of dairy and proteins generally have also been pretty sweet.
Companies dedicated to impulse buys are likely to be the ones losing far more sleep as the narrative of nutrition changes from one of less fat, salt and sugar to one of more protein, more fibre and potentially more plants.
With a number of big dairy companies presenting over the two days, the idea of plant-forward options and dietary shifts rarely had a look in. Much was made (as it was at last year’s gathering) of the potential in regenerative agriculture to curb the scope 3 emissions of food companies.
Emma Pinchbeck set the record straight. The chief executive of the climate change committee used her keynote to outline where agricultural emissions in the UK are now (staying steady as they have been for quite a few years) and where they need to be to meet the 7th carbon budget – a 39% reduction by 2040 on 2022 levels.
There is plenty that can be done on farms she said, but there is no getting away from the meat and dairy reductions that will be required. People are up for this, from the extensive research CCC has done through its citizen panels, but they do want information on emissions.
Indeed, the knowledge gap linking what we eat with climate change and biodiversity loss remains bigger than we think.
Our other articles this week cover Unilever’s cage-free eggs u-turn, a multi-billion pound alternative protein opportunity and Anya Doherty tries to reassure those worrying about the accuracy of their scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions:
