The Great Food Transformation

The EAT initiative was launched in 2013 by Gunhild Stordalen and Johan Rockström in Scandinavia. It seeks to revolutionize global dietary patterns by sharply decreasing the intake of animal products and advocating for ‘alternative proteins’. At the time, Stordalen was married to Norwegian billionaire Petter Stordalen, and Rockström was at the helm of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. 

The initiative gained momentum with its inaugural Food Forum in Stockholm in 2014, endorsed by celebreties like the Prince of Wales and Bill Clinton. In 2016, with financial backing from the Wellcome Trust, the EAT-Lancet Commission was formed. Under the leadership of Harvard's Walter Willett, the Planetary Health Diet was created as a new dietary recommendation, promoting semi-vegetarianism. 

Being a self-declared 'Davos for food', EAT aims to 'add value to business and industry' and ‘set the political agenda’. This connection to the World Economic Forum is no coincidence. Stordalen was appointed as WEF Young Global Leader in 2015 and maintains close ties with WEF's President Børge Brende, a former Norwegian Minister and member of the Bilderberg steering committee.

The WEF has kick-started EAT and still supports it intensively, for instance through joint events at Davos meetings. EAT's Great Food Transformation aligns seamlessly with WEF's Great Reset initiative, both in wording and in vision. Through public-private partnerships similar to those of Davos, EAT works towards a radical overhaul of global food systems, influencing initiatives like the EU's Green Deal. 

EAT collaborates extensively with specific entities within the United Nations, such as WHO and UNEP. This collaboration is facilitated by WEF's strategic partnership with the UN to push forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This partnership represents nothing short of a corporate capture of the UN, shifting decision-making power towards corporate-led initiatives.

Major agri-food corporations have aligned with the WEF/EAT vision to reform diets by promoting ‘alternative proteins', viewing it as a market expansion opportunity. In 2017, EAT partnered with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development through the FReSH initiative. Additionally, the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) was created, with substantial backing from companies like Unilever and Yara, to roll out the EAT-Lancet agenda.

EAT also garnered support from vegan-tech investors, such as prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, and the Good Food Institute, the leading lobby group for vegan-tech industries. Together, they maintain close ties with FAIRR, founded by vegan Jeremy Coller with the aim to end ‘industrial livestock’ and serving as a financial pressure group to force business into ‘plant-based’ markets.

The alignment between EAT and the WEF, UN, and WBCSD became very clear during the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. The Summit faced strong criticism for its corporate dominance, lack of transparency in leadership selection, and concerns over the expertise and funding of the appointed leaders. Various farmer groups, scientsts, and even UN special rapporteurs, have argued that the Summit represented a hostile takeover by transnational corporations, philanthrocapitalists, and Davos.

EAT's Stordalen was appointed to chair the Summit's Action Track 2, which focused on promoting 'sustainable diets'. Her stated aim was 'to take full advantage of the Summit', as to drive the 'far-reaching changes that the world now desperately needs'. The World Health Organization served as the Track's anchoring agency. Francesco Branca, a WHO director and EAT-Lancet Commissioner, is a known advocate of a Davos-style 'reset' of the food systems, including a drastic reduction in meat. 

Action Track 2 was characterized by a strong anti-livestock stance, featuring a vegan advocate as Youth Vice-Chair, the CEO of 50by40—an activist umbrella organization with the mission to halve global livestock herds by 2040—as Civil Society Leader, and various animal rights advocates among its workstream leaders and supportive scientists. To give a seat to the vegan-tech lobby, the Good Food Institute was tasked with leading the 'innovation pillar' across all action tracks.

The Planetary Health Diet heavily restricts animal source foods, calling red meat an ‘unhealthy’ food like sugar, and advocates for alternative proteins. In contrast to what is commonly assumed, its semi-vegetarian composition (with a vegan option) is primarily rooted in assumptions about human health, as to minimize chronic disease, rather than environmental considerations.

Conceptually, EAT’s Great Food Transformation traces back to earlier initiatives for great transition schemes proposed by EAT’s strategic partners. Examples include the 'Great Transformation' suggested by the German Advisory Council on Global Change, the Tellus Institute’s 'Great Transition', and the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ and ‘Great Transformation’.

The strategy of EAT’s Great Food Transformation is top-down and interventionist, proposing hard policy measures to bypass the 'whim of consumer choice’. Such policy options make use of fiscal and economic incentives, as well as legal measures. These range from the mandatory use of nutritional warning labels, over the application of 'sin taxes', to the banning of meat from menus.

EAT-Lancet's Planetary Health Diet may not effectively address chronic diseases as intended and may potentially result in deficiencies. Therefore, it fails to convincingly deliver what it promised, while introducing risk. It has been criticized by various authors, to the point of being called 'science fiction'.

EAT-Lancet’s Planetary Health Diet has faced a lot of criticism for neglecting some of the broader nutritional, ecological, cultural, and economic factors. Critics argue that it lacks consideration for the realities of different regions, has an urban middle-class bias, and relies on unrealistic assumptions.