Many of our sustainability challenges today are strongly rooted within eco-agri-food systems. Shifting dietary behaviour is therefore a key lever for simultaneously addressing the interlinkages among these problems, for example by tackling non-communicable diseases, environmental degradation, and climate change.

PLAN’EAT – is a Horizon Europe project that seeks to facilitate the transition towards healthy and sustainable dietary behaviour through an in-depth understanding of its underlying factors and drivers and the development of innovative, effective recommendations, tools and interventions addressing different agri-food system actors.

PLAN’EAT aims to implement a systemic approach at the macro (food system), meso (food environment) and micro (individual) levels. Various socio-cultural and geographic contexts across Europe will be considered by implementing nine living labs in different European areas, five pan-European food value chain consultation and working groups as well as a policy lab.

As part of the implementing consortium of 24 partners, TMG will lead work on True Cost Accounting (TCA) to analyse the environmental, socio-economic and health impacts of European diets and their associated costs. Among other activities, this component of the project entails:

• analysing the availability of TCA data

• developing a database with average true costs of 100+ European food products

• identifying indicators for socio-economic and social true cost assessments, and

• assessing the "true costs" of three different European dietary patterns.

Building on this work, TMG will also be involved in developing a roadmap for the establishment of a proposed European Food Policy Council, as well as setting up a methodology framework to design easy-to-understand healthy and sustainable food-based dietary guidelines at the national level, for various population groups.

With funding from the European Commission, the members of the PLAN'EAT consortium are:

Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Wageningen University, Justus-Liebig-Universität, European Food Information Council, Foundation for Environmental Education, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Sopexa, Environmental Social Science Research Group, Technical University of Munich, Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, European Public Health Alliance, Spread European Safety, Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University College Dublin, Fondazione ICONS, Jagiellonian University, Zuidelijke Land en Tuinbouw Organisatie, Charokopeio panepistimio (Harokopio University), Ethniko kentro erevnas kai technologikis anaptyxis, Hungarian Hospitality Employers’ Association - VIMOSZ, Euroquality