A new diet: news on food habits and climate change

Abstract

This work focuses on the dissemination of messages concerning a healthy diet presented by the Eat-Lancet Commission on Food. Published in January of 2019, this proposal predicted health benefits, keeping in mind the context of climate change as well as our planet's growing population. The proposed diet was shared by several international media corporations and some of them used the BBC´s version as their textual source. Supported by Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aimed to find an answer to the following question: How do these suggestions of how to change food habits provoke individuals to reflect on climate change? Despite some criticism, which is already emerging about that diet model, it is relevant to study the messages which have media impact on topics related to climate change and the role they have regarding the possibility to be followed. Besides the news release on the diet shared by BBC News, two other articles from The Guardian and three Brazilian publications were also analysed—UOL, G1 and Época Negócios. It was concluded that a complexity lens is essential to understand those discourses and the communicational convocations related to that thematic axis.