Food Supply And Dietary Guidelines Mismatch: Policy Recommendations To Improve Human And Planetary Health

At this time, global agricultural policies encourage the growing of crops that are detrimental to human and planetary health. In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health published dietary guidelines to promote human and planetary health, but it is unknown whether countries currently provide enough of these recommended foods. To fill this knowledge gap, we used Food and Agriculture Organization food availability data from the period 2016-20 to compare food supplies from twelve countries against the EAT-Lancet guidelines. Our findings indicate that there is an oversupply of grains, animal products, and sugar, while no country's food supply offers enough vegetables or nuts, and many countries lack fruit and seafood. We recommend four agricultural policy actions to address this disconnect: redirect direct agricultural subsidies from commodity crops to specialty crops, increase the presence and scale of crop insurance subsidies for specialty crops, increase investment in research and development for specialty crops, and reduce tariff levels.