A diet to save the planet - brought to you by a Wall Street bet on margarine
Food activist Gunhild Stordalen claims critics of the EAT-diet are industry shills. But EATs Davos dinner invitations revealed her very own industry ties.
As food activist Gunhild Stordalen geared up for the upcoming relaunch of the EAT Lancet in January, top level stakeholders were confidentially invited to an “exclusive dinner” in Davos - showcasing “The next generation of delicious food”.
Among the invited were Norwegian minister of international development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim.
The Norwegian government has been a significant donor to Stordalens work through the years, not least by financing her work stream at the UN Food Systems summit in 2021.
According to the email, released to me by a freedom of information request, Stordalen hoped to gather around 60 high level participants in the so-called “SDG-tent” in Davos.
The invitation - and the subsequent announcement of a “main partner” for the upcoming EAT Forum in Stockholm in October - reveal how the plant-based food industry continues to line up behind Stordalens efforts to sideline meat and dairy in global diets.
The sponsor of the Davos dinner and the EAT Forum is the Flora Food Group, a private-equity owned margarine company spun off from the consumer brand giant Unilever in 2018 - in what has become a 8 billion dollar private equity-bet on the plant-based diet and a food-systems transformation.
By aligning with Stordalen, Floras private equity owners Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR, known from the book & film Barbarians at the gate) and their management clearly hope to mobilize a shift from dairy based fats towards synthetic margarines - in a bid to increase the value of their multi-billion dollar investment.
Climate and “plant-based” is the new selling point for margarine producers - who have previously leaned heavily on the cholesterol-lowering effects of seed oils to win over consumers from traditional dairy products.
Floras flagship advertising campaign does not leave much to imagination about their intentions - it is simply called “Skip the cow”.
The positioning: Good vs. evil
While Stordalen eagerly accepts industry funding to shore up her own lobbyism efforts - she just as enthusiastically paints a picture of herself and her supporters as industry-confronting, truth-seeking believers in science.
EAT and its supporters are on a mission to “save the planet”, critics of their utopian recipes are mostly industry shills, representing the generally evil meat industry, supported by PR agencies, trying to discredit “science”.
This positioning was wonderfully framed in a rather credulous Guardian article in April titled “PR campaign may have fuelled food study backlash, leaked document shows”.
In it, Stordalens supporters line up with their victim stories following the first diet launch back in 2019:
Diet-study author Marco Springmann said he faced serious burnout after the “media storm”
Line Gordon, another author of the study, said she was “overwhelmed” with “really nasty” comments
Victor Galaz added “Everyone was shocked by the volume and tone of the tweets: the aggressiveness and degree of lying, to put it very bluntly”
In a recent and similarly gullible follow-up in Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet, Stordalen elaborated on the “well-organized misinformation” campaign she and her followers faced five years ago:
“It particularly affected researchers and collaborators, who participated with their professional integrity and a desire to contribute to solutions.”
Further:
“The negative campaign had a clear intention: To discredit the science and create uncertainty. That contributed to making many decision makers hesitate from taking necessary steps. It delayed important action”.
But this time, Stordalen claims to be better prepared.
“Based on the experience from the first report, the launch is now better coordinated, with many more partners and allies ready to defend the research,” she says, but emphasizes:
“We welcome healthy scientific debate, but negative campaigns filled with misinformation must be countered. We are ready.”
Here´s how Stordalen presented the stories on her LinkedIN-account:
The slide deck
As I wrote (in Norwegian) back in March, Stordalen has been promoting her upcoming EAT Forum with a 34 page slide deck stating ambitions to position EAT-Lancet as the independent “food equivalent” to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).
The slide deck also reveals some of the plans surrounding the launch of the 2.0-diet, including op-eds from “scientific partners” Harvard, Cornell, PIK and Stockholm Resilience Center and a campaign with a “Celebrity Influencer group”.
You can download the slide deck here: THE SCIENCE-BASED GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR FOOD SYSTEMS TRANSFORMATION
The deck also shows who Stordalen hopes to invite/pay to speak at the event in October, a list topped by former First Lady Michelle Obama:
EAT also shared a list of companies and potential sponsors they had “ongoing negotiations with”.
As of July 5, none of the suggested “VVIP” speakers had been confirmed to the event. And only Flora Food Group has been announced publicly on the EAT Forum web page as a “main partner”.
Both EAT and Flora released statements in that announcement:
“Flora Food Group is proving that the next generation of food is not only delicious, but it’s better for you and for the planet,” said Dr Gunhild Stordalen, Co-founder and Executive Chair of EAT. “Food businesses must lead the way in making sustainable diets the norm and EAT is thrilled to partner with this innovative company to drive meaningful action at the Forum and beyond.”
David Haines, CEO of Flora Food Group, said “Flora Food Group is committed to delivering the next generation of delicious, natural, and nutritious food. Through this partnership with EAT, we will accelerate the transformation of food systems by making sustainable, choices more affordable and accessible to consumers worldwide.“
Some concluding misinformation
It is of course difficult to preemptively assess or criticize the EAT-Lancet 2.0 diet - perhaps all the challenges of the first diet (nutritional deficiency, one-sizing across landscapes and cultures, prohibitive costs in poor countries, to name some) have been magically resolved in the five years since 2019.
But let me share my three primary concerns with the EAT project:
First: Nutritional science is often too methodically flawed and the findings are too weak to justify interventionist policies. These weaknesses affect the arguments for less saturated fats, campaigns to minimize meat consumption, or recommendations to eat five-a-day or even close to a kilo of fruits and vegetables daily, as Norway now does.
Second, every country must adapt their diets to the local culture, economy, and landscape. And in quite a few cultures, economies, and landscapes - livestock are - and will remain - essential.
Just look at Stordalens home country, Norway.
Here, general adherence to a diet limited to 350 grams of red meat weekly - which is now the official dietary guideline - would mean that more than 30% of Norwegian agriculture would be closed down, both in terms of land use and employment.
This is according to analysis done for the Norwegian Environment Agency.
The even more meatless EAT-diet would almost certainly mean shutting down of most of the Norwegian grass, livestock & dairy-based agriculture sector.
“Skipping the cow” could put 70% of Norwegian farmers out of business!
Finally, the EAT-Lancet diet will always be a utopian project.
A diet to save the planet sounds nice - but at some point choosing margarine over butter will not be voluntary - for the planet to be saved.
Utopian ideas inevitably descend into calls for use of political power, outright revolution - or as the oh-so-sustainably fed Davos crowd likes to call it - a food systems transformation.
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Thanks for reading!
My name is Lars Magne Sunnanå and I am a former journalist and editor in the Norwegian newspapers Aftenposten, VG and E24. Since 2022, I´ve written about nutrition science and policy in Norway as an unpaid hobby. My work has been cited or published in several Norwegian news outlets, ranging from NRK, Nettavisen, Aftenposten, Morgenbladet, Nationen, Subjekt, to Norsk Landbruk.
My Norwegian Substack can be found here.
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