In the face of growing environmental pressures, understanding how governance can promote more sustainable dietary behaviours is increasingly critical. However, a synthesis of available intervention strategies for behavioural change is currently missing. This umbrella review synthesizes findings from 29 reviews published between 2018–2024, assessing effectiveness of governance interventions aimed at reducing consumer-level food waste and shifting diets toward more environmentally sustainable patterns, particularly reducing meat consumption and increasing the uptake of more sustainably produced foods. Using a dual-method approach, combining narrative synthesis and effect direction analysis, we evaluated interventions through the lens of behavioural change theory. A majority of interventions demonstrated positive effects, especially those targeting food waste, which tend to face fewer cultural and motivational barriers than dietary changes such as meat reduction. Information-based interventions were most commonly studied. While they effectively raise awareness and influence attitudes, there is broad consensus that they are insufficient in isolation to drive substantial behaviour change. Interventions that restructure the decision-making context, such as setting vegetarian meals as default, removing trays in canteens, or reducing portion sizes, consistently showed positive effects. Written and verbal cues were effective in reducing food waste, while results were more mixed for meat reduction. Feedback and goal-setting strategies appear promising, but have been evaluated mostly through stated, rather than observed, behaviours. Fewer studies examined incentivising, coercive, or training-based interventions, though these approaches may offer higher impact if implemented appropriately. Overall, the findings highlight the need to combine intervention types to target the full range of behavioural determinants: capability, opportunity, and motivation. We also highlight the need for more rigorous, long-term, and context-sensitive research. Finally, we offer recommendations for policy makers and researchers, emphasizing that consumer-focused efforts must be integrated into a broader, cross-sectoral policy strategy, spanning health, agriculture, environment, and education, to enable substantial change in food consumption behaviours.

The global appetite for environmentally sustainable and just seafood is expected to grow in coming decades. However, the sustainable seafood movement, including private governance tools like certifications and recommendation lists has yet to transform fisheries and aquaculture on a large scale. At the same time, alternative voluntary governance approaches have taken shape, each aiming to guide production and consumption toward greater sustainability. In this article, we delve into less-explored yet potentially promising approaches to seafood sustainability, which could help address current limitations to achieving sustainable seafood. Through a critical review, we have mapped and characterised emerging strategies to sustainable seafood and their theory of change and identified three clusters: (i) private sector pre-competitive collaborations (ii) landscape-based approaches and (iii) relational approaches. These are described through looking back on historical developments and giving examples of previous and current implementation, as well as describing how they address key limitations identified from the certifications and seafood rating scheme approaches. We then overlap the approaches onto transformation literature and categorise them into ‘systemic’ or ‘enabling’ approaches to transformation in the food system. Enabling approaches focus on building capacities for change, while systemic approaches target key features of social-ecological systems for focused transformation. From here, compatibilities between approaches are discussed—whether there are fundamental tensions and when these might arise. Finally, based on the literature, we outline a potential new trajectory for the sustainable seafood movement, grounded in pluralism, collaboration, and trust.

Transforming global and local food systems is essential for achieving current sustainability goals. A significant lever for the food sector is promoting a dietary shift away from animal-based proteins towards more plant-based options. Food retailers, positioned at the centre of the value chain, hold a uniquely influential role, as they have the capacity to shape the behaviours of both producers and consumers. However, consumer acceptability is a precondition for implementing behavioural change interventions, and there is a current knowledge gap regarding public acceptability of various retail-led interventions. In this study, we assess consumer acceptability of five categories of food retail-led interventions: information-based, norms-based, choice architecture, price-based, and choice restriction. In this mission we developed a survey and recruited a nationally representative sample (n = 424), we found price manipulations and choice restrictions to be less accepted than strategies building on information, norms, and choice architecture. Furthermore, a multi-level model showed that perceived effectiveness, fairness, and freedom of choice were significant predictors of acceptance for the interventions, with the exception that freedom of choice did not predict support for either the norm-based intervention or choice architecture. Lastly, we showcase how older age, positive meat attitudes, and strong meat-buying habits hindered acceptance, while biospheric values, environmental identity, and altruism facilitated it. Two potential courses of retailer action are identified: (1) immediately implement high-support interventions based on information, social norms, and choice architecture and (2) explore how to convey intervention effectiveness to increase consumer acceptability of price-based interventions and choice restrictions.

A focus on improvements to livestock production limits the scope for food systems transformation. Research, policy and industry must adopt measures to downsize livestock production and consumption to meet sustainability targets and facilitate a just transition.  

Background The global food system is inflicting substantial environmental harm, necessitating a shift towards more environmentally sustainable food consumption practices. Policy interventions, for example, information campaigns, taxes and subsidies and changes in the choice context are essential to stimulate sustainable change, but their effectiveness in achieving environmental goals remains inadequately understood. Existing literature lacks a comprehensive synthesis of evidence on the role of public policies in promoting sustainable food consumption. Our systematic map addressed this gap by collecting and categorising research evidence on public policy interventions aimed at establishing environmentally sustainable food consumption patterns, in order to answer the primary research question: What evidence exists on the effects of public policy interventions for achieving environmentally sustainable food consumption?

Methods Searches for relevant records (in English) were performed in WoS, Scopus, ASSIA, ProQuest Dissertation and Theses, EconLit, Google Scholar and in bibliographies of relevant reviews. A grey literature search was also performed on 28 specialist websites (searches were made in the original language of the webpages and publications in English, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian were eligible) and Google Scholar (search in English). Screening was performed at title/abstract and full-text levels, with machine learning-aided priority screening at title/abstract level. Eligibility criteria encompassed settings, interventions (public policies on sustainable food consumption), target groups and outcomes. No critical appraisal of study validity was conducted. Data coding covered bibliographic details, study characteristics, intervention types and outcomes. Evidence was categorised into intervention types and subcategories. Visual representation utilised bar plots, diagrams, heatmaps and an evidence atlas. This produced a comprehensive overview of effects of public policy interventions on sustainable food consumption patterns.

Review findings The evidence base included 227 articles (267 interventions), with 92% of studies in high-income countries and only 4% in low-income countries. Quantitative studies dominated (83%), followed by mixed methods (16%) and qualitative studies (1%). Most interventions were information-based and 50% of reviewed studies looked at labels. Information campaigns/education interventions constituted 10% of the sample, and menu design changes and restriction/editing of choice context 8% each. Market-based interventions represented 13% of total interventions, of which two-thirds were taxes. Administrative interventions were rare (< 1%). Proxies for environmental impact (85%) were more frequent outcome measures than direct impacts (15%). Animal-source food consumption was commonly used (19%) for effects of interventions on, for example, greenhouse gas emissions. Most studies used stated preferences (61%) to evaluate interventions.

Conclusions The literature assessing policies for sustainable food consumption is dominated by studies on non-intrusive policy instruments; labels, information campaigns, menu design changes and editing choice contexts. There is a strong need for research on sustainable food policies to leave the lab and enter the real world, which will require support and cooperation of public and private sector stakeholders. Impact evaluations of large-scale interventions require scaling-up of available research funding and stronger multidisciplinary research, including collaborations with industry and other societal actors. Future research in this field should also go beyond the European and North American context, to obtain evidence on how to counteract increasing environmental pressures from food consumption worldwide.

Comprehensive but interpretable assessment of the environmental performance of diets involves choosing a set of appropriate indicators. Current knowledge and data gaps on the origin of dietary foodstuffs restrict use of indicators relying on site-specific information. This Personal View summarises commonly used indicators for assessing the environmental performance of diets, briefly outlines their benefits and drawbacks, and provides recommendations on indicator choices for actors across multiple fields involved in activities that include the environmental assessment of diets. We then provide recommendations on indicator choices for actors across multiple fields involved in activities that use environmental assessments, such as health and nutrition experts, policy makers, decision makers, and private-sector and public-sector sustainability officers. We recommend that environmental assessment of diets should include indicators for at least the five following areas: climate change, biosphere integrity, blue water consumption, novel entities, and impacts on natural resources (especially wild fish stocks), to capture important environmental trade-offs. If more indicators can be handled in the assessment, indicators to capture impacts related to land use quantity and quality and green water consumption should be used. For ambitious assessments, indicators related to biogeochemical flows, stratospheric ozone depletion, and energy use can be added.

A greater focus on governance is needed to facilitate effective and substantive progress toward sustainability transformations in the aquaculture sector. Concerted governance efforts can help move the sector beyond fragmented technical questions associated with intensification and expansion, social and environmental impacts, and toward system-based approaches that address interconnected sustainability issues. Through a review and expert-elicitation process, we identify five engagement arenas to advance a governance agenda for aquaculture sustainability transformation: (1) setting sustainability transformation goals, (2) cross-sectoral linkages, (3) land–water–sea connectivity, (4) knowledge and innovation, and (5) value chains. We then outline the roles different actors and modes of governance can play in fostering sustainability transformations, and discuss action items for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to operationalize activities within their engagement arenas.

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich1, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats2, and contribute to the health3, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities4. The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these findings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. To account for how context-specific environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects affect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefits and trade-offs at national and international scales. We find that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B₁₂ and omega-3 deficiencies. Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact. The analytical framework we provide also identifies countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefits and trade-offs associated with pursuing these objectives.

Despite the growing knowledge that food system solutions should account for interactions and drivers across scales, broader societal debate on how to solve food system challenges is often focused on two dichotomous perspectives and associated solutions: either more localized food systems or greater global coordination of food systems. The debate has found problematic expressions in contemporary challenges, prompting us to revisit the role that resilience thinking can play when faced with complex crises that increase uncertainty. Here we identify four ‘aching points’ facing food systems that are central points of tension in the local–global debate. We apply the seven principles of resilience to these aching points to reframe the solution space to one that embeds resilience into food systems’ management and governance at all scales, supporting transformative change towards sustainable food systems.