In its first policy brief, Horizon Europe-backed project Giant Leaps is urging the EU to accelerate the transition to alternative proteins while preserving the nutritional adequacy of diets.
The EU is increasingly facing calls for a food systems transformation, and one project backed by the bloc has laid out a vision for doing so in a sustainable manner.
Giant Leaps, a 35-member, 17-country initiative backed by a €10.3M Horizon Europe grant, is focused on accelerating the region’s protein transition.
In its first policy paper, the project highlights the crucial role of protein intake and quality, the impact of replacing animal proteins with planet-friendly alternatives (such as plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated proteins), and the importance of maintaining nutritional adequacy during the protein transition.
Animal agriculture accounts for 81-86% of the EU’s food-related greenhouse gas emissions, even though it provides only 32% of calories and 64% of protein. The EU’s own scientific advisory board has advocated shifting from meat-heavy to plant-rich diets to meet the EU’s climate ambitions.
There’s a financial benefit, too. Analysis shows that with just a €1.4B investment in alternative proteins, supportive policies could add €111B annually to the bloc’s economy by 2040.
“A dietary shift from animal-based foods to alternative protein foods involves multiple nutrition-related aspects, including protein adequacy and quality in the general population, adequate intake of other essential nutrients, and the needs of vulnerable groups requiring special attention,” the Giant Leaps project notes.
“It also affects diet planning, the need to complement existing protein sources, food processing and highlights the importance of improved methods for assessing protein quality.”
How the EU can address nutritional quality in the protein transition
The policy paper outlines seven recommendations for an EU-wide nutrition-focused protein transition. It stresses that a shift from 60% animal-based protein to alternative sources is “unlikely to result in inadequate protein or indispensable amino acids intake”, and that protein quality and quantity may be reduced when animal proteins are replaced.
To that end, the project’s stakeholders highlight the need to monitor protein adequacy and quality in national food consumption surveys. Moreover, there’s a wider call to assess nutritional sufficiency beyond just protein to ensure that a dietary shift prioritises the “entire nutrient package”.
“Expected favourable changes in nutrient intake include lower intake of calories and saturated fats, alongside increased intake of fibre, vitamins C and E, folate, and phytonutrients. Conversely, less favourable changes may involve decreased intake of B vitamins, iron, zinc, calcium and iodine,” they wrote. “Monitoring should also include these at-risk nutrients to ensure overall dietary adequacy.”
It’s critical to address the needs of vulnerable groups, such as infants, pregnant women, older adults, and patients with specific health conditions, who may find it more challenging to consume enough nutrient-dense foods when their nutritional requirements are higher. This could be exacerbated by dietary shifts, so ensuring adequate nutrition is key.
The Giant Leaps brief says incorporating a range of alternative protein sources is important not just to ensure adequate nutrient intake, but also to facilitate adoption and cultural acceptability. Innovation in meat and dairy alternatives can complement incumbent options to maximise choice for consumers, though significant investment is needed to enhance sensory qualities and build efficient production chains.
Another recommendation involves diet planning and food fortification. The former could enhance protein quality by combining alternative proteins with complementary amino acid profiles in each meal, and including animal proteins, as is the case with blended meat.
This alone won’t enhance digestibility – for that, food processing plays an influential role. Many methods used for alternative proteins, such as milling, germination, fermentation, enzymatic pre-treatment and extrusion, “can positively impact protein digestibility by improving protein solubility and reducing anti-nutritional factors like phytate and protein inhibitors”.
Finally, EU lawmakers are being urged to develop validated screening methods to assess the protein quality of novel foods for effective meal planning and for research into the impacts of dietary changes. Currently, there’s limited data on amino acid profiles and digestibility due to high costs and animal-testing concerns, so alternative systems – such as ISO-certified in vitro models – should be made available.
Giant Leaps calls for four policy actions for protein shift
The Giant Leaps brief notes how the protein transition is progressing slowly as individuals and businesses face challenges in making this change. So upping alternative protein intake requires significant shifts in dietary habits and the development of affordable and appealing replacements for animal proteins.
Building on its recommendations, the document makes four calls to action for EU leaders:
- The protein transition needs targeted efforts to educate and engage consumers, especially vulnerable groups, about how alternative proteins satisfy nutritional needs and familiar tastes and textures. This calls for public awareness campaigns, culinary education, an emphasis on complementary protein combinations, and greater information about the use of foods containing alternative proteins.
- Policymakers should advance nutritional guidelines on protein requirements at the national and EU levels. This would include more precise references to essential amino acid profiles and protein quality scores with minimum acceptable values below 1 for various populations, as well as acceptable consumption times for protein-rich foods.
- Political action should prioritise subsidies for the sustainable farming of incumbent alternative proteins over livestock agriculture. There’s a need to stimulate the production of novel proteins by supporting these farming practices and industrial biotech, and encouraging optimal processing steps. To achieve that, the EU must set up and support sustainable food business ecosystems.
- Finally, the bloc must continue funding research to address knowledge gaps in protein transition. Scientific research is required to assess the nutritional adequacy of “farther-off transition scenarios” (where animal proteins make up under 40% of the diet), to develop and validate in vitro methods to assess protein quality, and to identify non-invasive biomarkers to indicate amino acid concentrations in humans.
“Currently, these alternatives are often more expensive, creating an additional barrier to adoption. Accelerating the transition needs substantial investments to help consumers change their eating behaviours towards a healthy, more sustainable diet,” the policy paper reads.
