Plant-based Diet

Baroness Alexander of Cleveden Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. He is right: it is important that we are able to support not just bees but the bee farming industry to ensure that that is a sustainable future. I do not have the specific details on where we are up to in banning the insecticide that he mentioned, but I certainly undertake to write to him for more details.

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister referenced the Government’s food strategy that was published in July. We are still waiting for the implementation plans. In the development of those plans, will the Government undertake to look at the highly authoritative EAT-Lancet commission that published earlier this month, which demonstrated that globally a move to a more plant-based diet could reduce preventable deaths by 15 million a year, one-quarter of all such deaths globally?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The Eatwell Guide, the UK’s dietary guidelines and, indeed, the EAT-Lancet diet have shared principles and a shared understanding of what makes a healthy diet. We have not undertaken a formal assessment of the EAT-Lancet diet compared with the Eatwell Guide, but it is fair to say that the guide is based on modelling UK dietary recommendations against UK habits, whereas the EAT-Lancet diet has not been tailored to the UK population. People in the UK are more likely to be able to follow our guidelines more successfully than EAT-Lancet as our guidelines are specific to the UK.