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The reasoning behind every verdict
Every mark on this site follows the same chain of reasoning. We start with the harm the food system does to the natural world, work out who that harm falls on, and then list the things a council or a government could actually do about it. This page walks through that chain, so you can see where any single came from.
Plant-Based Food Transition
"Farming animals at industrial scale is one of the main things pushing the natural world past its limits. Moving towards plant-based food helps on four fronts at once: a steadier climate, less land used up, room for wildlife to recover, and food everyone can afford."
This is the starting claim behind every explanation on this site.
Harm to nature: Most farmland grows feed for animals, and only a tenth to a seventh of that food's energy reaches us.
Harm to nature: Livestock give off methane and nitrous oxide, both far stronger than carbon dioxide, and clearing land for them releases more.
Harm to nature: A few owners hold most of the land, food costs rise, and diet-related illness falls hardest on poorer households.
Harm to nature: Forests are cleared for pasture and for the soy grown to feed livestock.
Each argument pairs one thing people stand to lose with one specific harm that industrial animal farming causes. A single decision can serve more than one of them.
One type of tool can serve several arguments at once. Decisions about land use, for example, count towards food security, climate resilience and nature recovery alike.
Plant-based option as the default in council catering
Return former grazing land to nature
A tax on meat and dairy
A share of hospital meals made plant-based
We record four things about every : the type of policy tool it uses, what it is for, who it applies to (councils, central government, Parliament or a devolved parliament), and why it counts.
The basic case
Research that holds true whatever the subject.
Where it applies: Any subject, any argument.
How strong the source is: usually 0.55–0.95, on our own scale of 0 to 1
The case for food policy
Research about food and farming in particular.
Where it applies: Any food-policy action.
How strong the source is: usually 0.55–0.95, on our own scale of 0 to 1
The case for one action
Research about one specific thing a public body could do.
Where it applies: One named action.
How strong the source is: usually 0.30–0.85, on our own scale of 0 to 1
For anything we write, we pull in the research closest in meaning to it, and prefer the stronger source where two are an equally good fit. The first two levels support the four arguments above; the third supports what we write about one particular action.
1 — Nature
What is happening to the natural world that makes this urgent? Drawn from the wider research, with real figures.
"Four fifths of farmland is given over to livestock, and only a tenth to a seventh of the energy in their feed reaches us as food — land that could feed five to ten times more people directly."
2 — People
How does that harm reach people here in the UK?
"The UK grows less of its own food and imports more. Diet-related illness falls hardest on lower-income households, who have the least access to affordable alternatives to meat."
3 — What government can do
What could a public body actually do about it, and what does the research say that would change?
"Making the plant-based option the default in school and hospital kitchens cuts how much meat those bodies buy, shows the cost is comparable, and makes the change ordinary. Where it has been tried, 30–60% of people take it."
The order matters: what is happening to nature first, then what that costs people here, then what a public body could change. Every explanation on the site is written from the same starting claim about the food system, so they all follow the same reasoning.
Home page — why it matters
The four arguments for change, written from the broader research and citing the papers used.
Action page — the case for it
For one action, why it matters under each of the four arguments.
Action page — the research
What the research about that one action says, both for and against.
Council page — what a decision changes
For one recorded vote, what it makes possible or rules out, cited to research.
What it is for is not the same as how it is done
Catering is a type of policy tool — a way of acting. Fair access to food is an argument — a reason to act. One catering decision can serve fair access, food security and the climate at once. Keeping the two apart stops us justifying a policy by pointing at the policy itself.
Tiers say how wide, not how good
A tier only says how widely a piece of research applies: to everything, to food policy, or to one action. A careful trial of one school-meals change can be better research than a broad report. How strong a source is, we rate separately.
Every explanation starts from the same claim
Every explanation on the site is written from the starting claim about the food system. Without it, the writing would drift into generic climate or health talk. With it, each one stays tied to the specific point: because industrial animal farming does this, acting here achieves that.