A study led by members of the Mandala Consortium at the University of Cambridge, has revealed that the impact of food production on species extinction risk can differ by up to a thousand times depending on the type of food and where it is produced. These findings, published in Nature Food in September 2025, provide fresh insights into how changing food policies could help reduce biodiversity loss.

By far the greatest threat to most of the world’s wild species is the loss and degradation of natural habitat. Around 75% of threatened or near-threatened land-based vertebrates are facing increased extinction risk due to reductions in the size, quality, and connectivity of their habitats. This is driven primarily by the expansion of agricultural land used to produce food, arising from the growing number of people to feed, and an increase in demand for foods that have a disproportionately greater impact on habitats.

To better quantify the impacts of different foods on species extinction risk, researchers at the University of Cambridge Zoology Department have developed Land-cover change Impacts on Future Extinctions (LIFE) metric. This assesses the impact of land use on the extinctions of some 30,000 land vertebrate species (mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians) and can estimate the impact of producing 1 kilogram of different food types on the chances of extinctions.

Dr Thomas Ball, Lead author on the study said:

The LIFE metric allows users, for the first time, to directly assess the impacts of different land uses across the globe on species extinction risks. Linking this to data on crop and livestock production means that we can investigate the potential extinction impacts of almost all food products.”

Beef and beetroot, north and south

The study finds significant differences in the impacts of different food types:

• Ruminant meat (largely beef and lamb) has a per-kilogram impact often roughly 1000 times greater impact than vegetables, and about one hundred times greater than plant-derived proteins like legumes.
• Even within food types (e.g. dairy, legumes, coffee), there is large variation in impact depending on where the food is produced, sometimes over ten times as much.

Where the food is produced and consumed is also crucial:

• In high income countries such as the United Kingdom, most of the extinction risk comes from imported commodities. In the UK, around 45% of the food eaten is imported, and the overseas biodiversity impact of UK food consumption is roughly 20 times greater than the impact of UK’s own domestic production.
• A large portion of this impact is driven by imported beef and lamb, as well as tropical products such as coffee, tea, cocoa, bananas, and other imported fruits.
• In contrast, for countries such as Brazil, Uganda and India, most of the biodiversity risk arises from domestic production. In particular, animal products and commodities grown in the tropics are generally much more impactful than staple crops and vegetables.

LIFE changes

These findings are directly relevant to Mandala’s mission of understanding how food systems can better balance human and planetary health. The research shows that, while different mitigation strategies are likely needed in different settings, even moderate shifts in food production and diets could lead to large reductions in extinction risk.

The authors modelled alternative diet scenarios for the United States (including the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, vegetarian and vegan models) and found that reducing ruminant meat consumption markedly lowers species extinction risks.

Improvements in domestic production methods, sustainable intensification, and sourcing from lower-impact regions may also reduce impacts. The study emphasises that policy, trade, and supply-chain decisions matter, not simply individual dietary choices.

The researchers acknowledge that the LIFE metric focuses on terrestrial habitats and vertebrates. Further works is needed to extend this understanding to the impacts on aquatic species, plants, invertebrates, as well as other threats such as pollution, pesticides or greenhouse-gas effects of food systems. Data availability and quality still also pose limitations, but the model is designed so that, as data improves, LIFE values can easily be recalculated.

Find out more

• Read the full paper: Food impacts on species extinction risks can vary by three orders of magnitude. Ball, T.S et al. Nature Food, September 2025 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01224-w

• Read more about quantifying the impacts of food on the environment

Can recipe boxes give families with school-aged children the opportunity to access more affordable healthy food?

In this episode of The Food Foundation’s podcast – Pod Bites – the MRC Epidemiology Unit’s Noah Cooke discusses how families in Birmingham are involved in the Recipe Box research and randomised control trial, which is believed to be the first of its kind.

The research is led by The Mandala Consortium, led by Prof Martin White, Professor of Population Health Research in the MRC Epidemiology Unit. The consortium brings together internationally renowned teams from the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, Warwick, Exeter, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and focuses on transforming urban food systems for planetary and population health.

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At Mandala we’re conducting a range of research projects across Birmingham to investigate how the food system is changing right now, and how it could change in the future.

We’ll be checking in before and after these projects through a series of short films – Stories from a Changing Food System – produced by Good Stories in Food.

The first of these films profiles our research with Change Kitchen, a social enterprise in Balsall Health, Birmingham which is aiming to provide healthy, sustainable and affordable vegetarian food.

Continue reading “Stories from a Changing Food System: Change Kitchen” →

In early December, members of the Mandala Consortium visited Birmingham to explore different aspects of the city’s food environment, systems and culture. In a packed 24 hours, researchers from the team visited a primary school, a hospital, the city markets, shops and restaurants, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler and a community growing site. We heard about how food is produced, processed, moved and consumed in the city. It’s not possible in this short space to cover everything we learned, but we wanted to share a few highlights.

Continue reading “The City of a Thousand Flavours – Reflections on a Birmingham visit” →