WWF Develops Tool to Help Retailers Meet Planetary Goals By Ramping Up Plant-Based Food Sales

The World Wildlife Fund has launched a tool for supermarkets to align their sales with their climate goals, urging them to sell more plant-based food than animal protein.

With retailers playing a key role in the food system’s emissions and its transition towards a low-impact industry, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is helping them with a new methodology to enable the protein transition.

Meat and dairy take up 57% of agrifood emissions, and up to a fifth of the world’s total emissions, while also using up 80% of farmland and 30% of the global freshwater supply. But despite this disproportionate use of resources, livestock farming only supplies 17% of the world’s calories and 38% of its protein.

Experts have suggested that emissions from the food system alone will blow us past our 1.5°C budget, and maybe even the 2°C mark – there’s no way for us to meet our climate targets without addressing agriculture.

On the flip side, vegan diets have been found to reduce emissions, land use and water pollution by 75% compared to those rich in meat. And even if we replace just half of our meat consumption with plant-based alternatives, it can lower farm and land use emissions by nearly a third, while halting deforestation and reducing hunger by 3.6%.

Hence, the protein transition – i.e., the shift away from animal- to plant-based food sources. Dietary change is the most effective lever in lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and as gatekeepers of both sides of the supply chain, retailers play a crucial role in enabling this shift.

“Retailers are critical in accelerating the transition to healthy and sustainable diets, particularly in countries with high consumption-related environmental impacts,” said Brent Loken, global food lead scientist at WWF. “This transition requires a rapid transformation of food environments and for healthy and sustainable foods to be made more affordable and accessible to all.”

To help move the needle, its Planet-Based Diets Retailer Methodology aims to support supermarkets in promoting plant-based food consumption over animal-sourced foods, which the conservation organisation says is critical to “restoring nature, limiting the impacts of climate change and supporting consumer health and wellbeing”.

Retailers urged to measure by weight, not protein

The report breaks down food sources into seven groups: meat, plant proteins, and meat analogues; dairy and dairy alternatives; fats and oils; fruits and vegetables; grains and cereals; tubers and starchy foods; and snacks high in fat, salt and sugar.

The methodology proposes a stepwise approach to help retailers drive the shift towards a more sustainable food system. The first step of the protein transition is to measure the balance of animal and plant-based sales for whole products like sausages, chicken breasts, chickpeas and yoghurt, as well as categorise composite products (like meals, salads, and sandwiches) into meat-based, seafood-based, vegetarian, and vegan. This step covers both branded and private-label offerings.

It recommends that retailers measure foods by weight instead of protein content, and provides several reasons for it. First, ‘protein transition’ doesn’t refer just to the macronutrient, but the overall diet. Plus, focusing on protein in the analysis could then delve into complexities like bioavailability and amino acid profiles, which raises the question of where to draw the line.

Secondly, focusing on the weight also allows the analysis to capture the entire spectrum of a retailer’s offering, not just their protein content. It also aligns with the methodology of other dietary models like the Planetary Health Diet or national guidelines, which aim to find the most optimal foods to achieve specific goals like meeting nutritional requirements and lowering climate impact.

Next, sales-based measures of products offer a standardised way to compare different products and categories, as well as across food groups. And finally, WWF says measuring sales in weight is straightforward and practical for most retailers, as they often manage inventory and sales data based on volume.

“This approach aims to provide a practical, consistent and holistic methodology that helps retailers effectively manage and improve the sustainability and health of their product range, while remaining aligned with established dietary frameworks and taking a broad view of diet quality,” the report reads.

WWF calls for 74:36 sales ratio in favour of plant-based foods

In step two, the WWF outlines an opportunity for retailers to dive deeper into the data of their own-brand products. This involves breaking down their composite products on an ingredient level to enhance the granularity in product categorisation. Here, retailers would measure the weight of each ingredient with a product, rather than using its total weight. For example, in a vegan lasagna, the 70g plant-based mince would go in the first food group, and the 20g non-dairy cheese in the second food group.

The methodology also offers a way for supermarkets to go beyond the protein transition and promote a healthy and sustainable dietary shift by addressing foods outside meat, dairy and their alternatives. “Retailers should track the proportion of whole grain sales compared to refined grains, as well as the proportion of fats from animal-based or plant-based sources,” it explains.

WWF is now urging retailers to set clear targets to rebalance diets in favour of plant-based – or planet-based, as it likes to say – foods. It has recommended setting targets to achieve a ratio of 60% plant-based protein sales, as well as an overall sales split of 74% in favour of plant-based foods (including vegetables, grains, starches and other food groups).

Some retailers in Europe have already done so. Lidl and Ahold Delhaize have set protein ratio goals in certain markets, and are vying to be the first to establish an international target.

“Retailers must be prepared to adapt their sales strategies to achieve both their own sustainability commitments and contribute to global goals,” said Mariella Meyer, senior manager of sustainable markets at WWF Switzerland.

“We know that intensive agriculture is the number one driver of the catastrophic decline of wildlife and nature, so promoting healthy, sustainable dietary choices is key. In countries where animal-source foods are overconsumed, food retailers can lead the way by rebalancing their products.”

The report also suggested that reformulating meat analogues that are high in salt, fat or sugar and may lack essential micronutrients is key to the protein transition. This is also why dairy alternatives need to be fortified, and why WWF champions plant proteins like tofu, tempeh and seitan to replace meat consumption.