Initiatives for Advancing Planetary Health Through Sustainable Food Systems: An Umbrella Review

Interventions in the food system to improve sustainability are emerging research areas reflecting complex relations between consumption, production, and environmental impact. This umbrella review aimed to explore current research on food systems initiatives and their relationship with human health and sustainability outcomes.

An umbrella review of systematic and scoping reviews describing food system initiatives with cobenefits for health and at least one sustainability outcome was conducted. Five databases were searched, covering 2015-2024.

The systematic search identified 2770 records and 20 articles were included. Most reviews described initiatives on sustainable diets (n = 7), food security (n = 3), urban agriculture (n = 4), food supply chain (n = 3), education (n = 2), and the global syndemic (n = 1). Three reviews (15%) reported on all three sustainability outcomes combined. Economic sustainability was reported only alongside social (n = 4) or environmental (n = 3) outcomes. Social and environmental outcomes were examined in isolation (social [n = 3]; environmental [n = 3]) or in combination (n = 4). No clear trends emerged between intervention topics and outcomes. Included reviews identified the need for further research that took a holistic approach to food system sustainability.

This review supports the crucial need for robust, methodological multidisciplinary systems research to effectively integrate all sustainability dimensions to drive transformative food systems' change.