What if justice was the missing ingredient in our food systems?
More than 700 million people go to bed hungry each night.
And that number only tells part of the story.
“We often talk about the aggregate numbers,” says Professor Nitya Rao, a commissioner on the landmark EAT–Lancet Commission on Food Systems for Health, Equity, and Planetary Boundaries. “But we don't really dig into it in the sense of who has, who doesn't have, and what are the reasons why.”
Rao, a professor of gender and development at the University of East Anglia, helped shape the Commission’s central argument: that food insecurity isn’t a logistical problem. It's a justice problem.
However, with a knowledge base that brings the right evidence to the right people, real change is possible.
The scale of the problem
~15 million
avoidable deaths per year are linked to unhealthy diets — 27% of all deaths worldwide
~15 million
avoidable deaths per year are linked to unhealthy diets — 27% of all deaths worldwide
Just 1%
of the world’s population lives within a food system that is both safe and just
Just 1%
of the world’s population lives within a food system that is both safe and just
The
richest 30%
of people cause more than 70% of food system environmental pressures
The
richest 30%
of people cause more than 70% of food system environmental pressures
“The beating heart of the commission”
Published in Elsevier journal The Lancet in 2025, the second EAT–Lancet Commission put justice at its core, a first in the history of food systems research.
Tamara Lucas, Consulting Editor at The Lancet explained, “Food justice is the beating heart of this commission,” she says. “It’s a radical idea. But everything can be linked back to justice whether it's production, commercial food, individual nutrition.”
“The beating heart of the commission”
Published in Elsevier journal The Lancet in 2025, the second EAT–Lancet Commission put justice at its core, a first in the history of food systems research.
Tamara Lucas, Consulting Editor at The Lancet explained, “Food justice is the beating heart of this commission,” she says. “It’s a radical idea. But everything can be linked back to justice, whether it's production, commercial food, individual nutrition.”
Three questions the system doesn’t ask
The Commission identifies three dimensions of food justice.
Recognition
Who is systematically left out
Distribution
Why resources flow the way they do
Representation
Asking who gets to decide
A handful of multinationals dominate seed supply, fertilizer production and retail food environment.
Rao describes smallholder farmers in Kenya and Ethiopia who prioritize cheap seed with maximum yield, not because they don't care about nutrition, but because markets give them no other signal.
Those market forces continue all the way to the checkout.
“We often blame people for not eating healthy,” says Rao. “But a McDonald's burger is five times cheaper than a proper fish and chips. When prices are rising and I can only spend £100 a week on food my choices are shaped by what I can afford. That’s a justice question.”
“When prices are rising and I can only spend £100 a week on food my choices are shaped by what I can afford. That’s a justice question.”
Professor Nitya Rao, Commissioner,
EAT–Lancet Commission on Food Systems for Health, Equity, and Planetary Boundaries
The knowledge base that makes change possible
The EAT–Lancet Commission has generated one of the most productive research ecosystems in recent publishing history. Submissions to The Lancet Planetary Health and One Earth frequently reference its work. The first report alone has accumulated nearly 10,000 citations, according to Scopus.
That body of knowledge is built and sustained by the journals, researchers and editorial infrastructure Elsevier has spent decades developing.
The knowledge base that makes change possible
The EAT–Lancet Commission has generated one of the most productive research ecosystems in recent publishing history. Submissions to The Lancet Planetary Health and One Earth frequently reference its work. The first report alone has accumulated nearly 10,000 citations, according to Scopus.
That body of knowledge is built and sustained by the journals, researchers, and editorial infrastructure Elsevier has spent decades developing.
Integrity that holds under pressure
When the first EAT–Lancet Commission published in 2019, it faced sustained criticism, later exposed by the Guardian as a possible industry-led attack by some elements of the agricultural industry. Some commissioners received death threats. Several dropped out of the subsequent commission entirely.
In response, the team focused on making the second commission as rigorous as possible, testing the evidence and conclusions through multiple rounds of peer review.
For a report intended to shape public debate and policy, that level of challenge matters. Credibility depends not just on the strength of the findings, but on how well they stand up to examination.
Integrity that holds under pressure
When the first EAT–Lancet Commission published in 2019, it faced sustained criticism, later exposed by the Guardian as a possible industry-led attack by some elements of the agricultural industry. Some commissioners received death threats. Several dropped out of the subsequent commission entirely.
In response, the team focused on making the second commission as rigorous as possible, testing the evidence and conclusions through multiple rounds of peer review.
For a report intended to shape public debate and policy, that level of challenge matters. Credibility depends not just on the strength of the findings, but on how well they stand up to examination.
When the right research doesn’t reach the right people
In a world where vested interests are well-resourced and well-organised, the quality and breadth of the evidence base is critical.
“You can't counter powerful vested interests just by calling them out,” says Rao. “We have to show evidence.”
But evidence only matters if it reaches the people who need it. Time pressures mean that policymakers often only draw on a narrow slice of available research.
AI could close that gap. Most tools, though, are trained on the open web inheriting its bias. Fast answers built on a shallow corpus don't close the evidence-policy gap. They reproduce it, faster.
In a world where vested interests are well-resourced and well-organised, the quality and breadth of the evidence base is critical.
“You can't counter powerful vested interests just by calling them out,” says Rao. “We have to show evidence.”
But evidence only matters if it reaches the people who need it. Time pressures mean that policymakers often only draw on a narrow slice of available research.
AI could close that gap. Most tools, though, are trained on the open web inheriting its bias. Fast answers built on a shallow corpus don't close the evidence-policy gap. They reproduce it, faster.
What researchers say about trust and AI
of researchers say peer-reviewed research is trustworthy — the standard evidence-based policy must be built on
agree publishers play a critical role in ensuring research integrity
say AI should be trained on the most up-to-date scholarly literature to be credible
Unlike general-purpose AI, tools like Elsevier’s LeapSpace are built on a vast, curated body of peer-reviewed research navigated using natural language, with every insight traceable back to its verified source.
“In today's polarized world, if I say something and you say something, we don't progress,” says Rao. “To influence policy, your recommendations have to be grounded in evidence.”
The change is already happening
The EAT–Lancet Commission's Planetary Health Diet has been adopted by cities from Paris to Milan, school meals programs across Indonesia, and hospitals in Germany and New York. Other examples of progress include:
India’s National Food Security Act guarantees every citizen five kilos of rice or wheat per month, sourced by law from small and marginal farmers at a guaranteed minimum price. When COVID-19 hit and millions lost their livelihoods overnight, the system held.
“The poor who didn't have jobs still got rice and wheat,” says Rao. “It was not a balanced diet. But they were not hungry.”
The UK’s new junk food advertising restrictions, which banned promotions of unhealthy food to children between 9am and 9pm, point to a different kind of win. Not a fix for affordability, but an acknowledgement that individuals aren't simply making bad choices. The system is making choices for them.
In Rao’s own work with indigenous communities in India, she found something remarkable. People with traditional millet-based diets, nutritionally excellent, environmentally sound, are abandoning them because advertising and status signals have taught them their own food is inferior. The Commission responded directly: legitimizing traditional diets from China, Japan, India, Senegal, Syria and beyond.
“Don't make this transition towards unhealthy,” Rao says. “You have good food. Stick with it.”
The research exists. The evidence is building. And in classrooms in Indonesia, hospitals in New York, and fields across India, it's already changing what people eat, and who gets to decide.