Developing the Sus-Health Index: a combined measure for describing environmental impact and nutritive value of foods and meals

There is a need to develop a commonly agreed approach that describes a food’s nutritive value and environmental impact that can be used to inform consumer choice. A new single index, the ‘Sus-Health Index’, is presented. The index was co-created in conjunction with a range of stakeholders drawn from policy, industry and consumer representation groups. The index is a product of existing nutrition and environmental indices, using a composite indicator methodology, and can be presented quantitatively as a numeric value or qualitatively on a categorized, colour coded, scale ‘A (best)–E (worst)’. The index was applied to a dataset of food products and meals, and its sensitivity and applicability were assessed using a Monte-Carlo simulation. The results indicate that the Sus-Health scale represents a pragmatic indicator of a food or meal’s combined nutritional and environmental value and could be used to help inform consumer food choices. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Transforming terrestrial food systems for human and planetary health’.