Sandro Dernini Books
Sandro Dernini is a researcher and expert in food culture and sustainable development, known for his work on the Mediterranean diet and food system sustainability.
Known for: Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
Books by Sandro Dernini
Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
What if the most powerful lever for improving public health and protecting the planet is not a new drug or technology, but the way we grow, choose, prepare, and share food? In Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps, Barbara Burlingame and Sandro Dernini present food as the meeting point of nutrition, agriculture, culture, economics, and ecology. Their argument is simple but far-reaching: diets cannot be judged only by calories, nutrients, or price. They must also be evaluated by how they affect biodiversity, natural resources, livelihoods, and long-term resilience. This book matters because modern food systems are producing a double burden: rising diet-related disease alongside environmental degradation. Burlingame, a leading nutrition scientist with deep FAO experience, and Dernini, a prominent expert on food culture and sustainability, bring both scientific rigor and policy insight to the topic. They show that sustainable diets are not an abstract ideal reserved for international conferences. They are a practical framework for governments, health professionals, researchers, educators, and everyday eaters who want food systems that nourish people without exhausting the Earth. The result is a timely guide to rethinking health through the lens of sustainability.
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How Sustainable Diets Entered Global Thinking
Big ideas often begin as neglected questions. The concept of a sustainable diet emerged when experts started asking whether a diet could be considered “good” if it improved human nutrition but damaged ecosystems, erased biodiversity, or undermined future food security. In the early 1990s, this was n...
From Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
Nutrition, Agriculture, and Ecology Are Linked
Every healthy meal begins long before the kitchen. One of the book’s central insights is that nutrition, agriculture, and sustainability are inseparable. Nutritional quality depends on what farming systems make possible, and farming systems depend on the health of soils, water, biodiversity, and cli...
From Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
Unsustainable Diets Harm People and Planet
A diet can quietly damage health in more ways than one. The book argues that unsustainable diets create a dual crisis: they contribute to noncommunicable diseases in humans while intensifying environmental pressures such as greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater depletion, land degradation, and biodiv...
From Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
Indicators Must Measure More Than Nutrients
What gets measured gets managed, and what gets ignored gets lost. A major contribution of the book is its insistence that sustainable diets require broader frameworks and better indicators. Traditional nutrition assessment focuses on nutrients, calories, anthropometric measures, and disease outcomes...
From Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
Policy Shapes What People Actually Eat
Food choice often looks personal, but it is heavily engineered by policy. One of the book’s strongest arguments is that sustainable diets will not scale through consumer awareness alone. Governments, institutions, and governance systems shape food availability, price, marketing, infrastructure, rese...
From Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
Culture and Tradition Are Strategic Assets
Progress does not always mean inventing something new; sometimes it means recovering what modern systems have pushed aside. The book emphasizes that cultural food traditions are not nostalgic leftovers but valuable resources for building sustainable diets. Traditional cuisines often evolved through ...
From Sustainable Diets for Health: Food System Approaches and Practical Steps
About Sandro Dernini
Sandro Dernini is a researcher and expert in food culture and sustainable development, known for his work on the Mediterranean diet and food system sustainability.
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Sandro Dernini is a researcher and expert in food culture and sustainable development, known for his work on the Mediterranean diet and food system sustainability.
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