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I’ve been lucky to have lived across the border, but luckier to have met some great people who love to eat as much as I do. I got to eat out a lot – from the local restaurants and hotels to traditional home-cooked meals. So when I am asked about that one dish which defines Pakistani cuisine, I’d say meat and lots of it. By meat, I mean beef, chicken and mutton, in that order.  Mutton is the most expensive meat, while the cheapest is chicken followed by beef and then fish.At most dinners, you will find keema (minced meat) preparation, a stewed meat dish such as Nihari, curried chicken like a Murgh Saalan, Pulao or a Biryani with either three meats or sometimes prawns or fish and plenty of Khameeri Rotis (yeasted breads).  In fact, the hearty mutton curry, Nihari is often served as a breakfast dish. As far as vegetables are concerned, you’ll mostly find them stuffed with some sort of keema or cooked in meat stock. Meat is quite a hit in most Pakistani homes. Dals and vegetables are also cooked with juicy chunks of meat to enhance the flavor. So you’ll often come across Meat-Wala Palak or Meat-Wale Chole.

It’s interesting to note that most homes love stuffing vegetables with spicy minced meat, so I ate plenty of Karela Keema (bitter gourd with minced meat), Bharwan Baingan and Stuffed Parwal (pointed gourd).  The only vegetable that escaped the meaty stuffing  was the humble potato, which is perhaps a staple in most households.  On Sunday mornings, aloo-poori-chole-halwa was brunch everywhere you went.

The ever-so-versatile paneer was a novelty, with only a few stores offering you a version of this cheese. Strangely sometimes it was more expensive than eggs, which were yet another staple.  This is probably why Palak Paneer and Nargisi Kofta (boiled egg wrapped in a casing of minced meat) were made on mostly on special occasions. Another thing that I noticed was that there was no heeng (asafoetida) available in local markets, most locals haven’t even heard of this spice. I also found that the tandoori chicken served here wasn’t red like how it is back home. They use the same masalas, just no colour. And the Chicken Tikka is called Chicken Boti because of the way the pieces are cut.My favourite dish was a Chicken Shorba that I ate at my friend Amina’s house when I dropped in unannounced one evening around dinner. Served with steamed rice and sliced onions, this was perhaps the best and most memorable dish I’ve ever eaten in Pakistan. It is a simple and mildly-spiced chicken curry. Ingredients like onions, tomatoes, green chillies, garlic and ginger are sauteed and then mixed with spices like turmeric, chilli powder and cumin powder. It was finally cooked with yogurt and water. The result was a flavourful broth like curry that tastes spectacular both in summer and winter. The truth is, there is no set rule for most households in Pakistan, except maybe one – putting out a meat dish no matter what time of the day or night it is

The EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0 is launching a new report to update the global community on their healthy diets and sustainable food systems goals.

The first EAT-Lancet Commission report was published in 2019. The EAT-Lancet 2.0 report will launch in 2024 and focus on diverse dietary guidelines, local diets, and food justice. In addition, the report will include 12-month long global consultations for the public and other interested global food systems stakeholders to share their thoughts on a transition to sustainable food systems, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) modeling efforts to evaluate multiple pathways to sustainable food systems.

The second EAT-Lancet Commission brings together 25 scientists from 19 countries and five continents. The Commission includes EAT, a science-based nonprofit in collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Harvard University, and One Consultive Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

The Commission’s research will “take into consideration the role sustainable, nourishing foods play in culture,” Shakuntala Thilsted, EAT-Lancet 2.0 Commission Co-Chair and 2021 World Food Prize Laureate, tells Food Tank. Thilsted adds that the Commission wants to “incorporate and integrate Indigenous and traditional knowledge with up-to-date scientific evidence.”

During the Commission’s press conference at Stockholm+50, Johan Rockström, EAT-Lancet 2.0 Commission Co-Chair and Director of PIK, said the EAT-Lancet 2.0 report will include guidance on investing in regenerative, carbon-sequestering farming systems. Walter Willet, Commission Co-Chair and Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, adds that capturing carbon will be a crucial part of the solution to staying “under 1.5 or two degrees centigrade by the end of the century.”

Policy suggestions within the 2019 report appear to be “a silver bullet,” Matthias Kaiser, Professor Emeritus at the Centre for the Study of Sciences and Humanities at the University of Bergen, Norway, tells Food Tank. He believes that the simplified recommendations laid out in the 2019 report are not globally utilizable. Kaiser also says that the 2019 report did not address global food chains’ uncertainties and complexities. He says the forthcoming report should consider “different food identities, food cultures, and traditions.”

Kaiser notes that reducing red meat consumption or production is possible, but the guidance should address specificity in “different regions and cultures.” In coastal cultures, for example, Kaiser says, a “large quantity of proteins” may come from seafood and less from red meat. Whereas areas that are lower income or that are located far from the sea, “don’t have the supply chains” to support a diet rich in seafood.

Stineke Oenema, Executive Secretary of UN Nutrition, tells Food Tank that “it’s important to look at the context” when making dietary recommendations. In lower-income countries, Oenema notes, it may be beneficial for eaters to consume more animal proteins.

During the EAT-Lancet 2.0 press conference, Willet said that the Commission will be taking a “fresh look” at red meat’s impact on healthy diets, among “many other diet and health relationships.”

The 2019 report also drew skepticism about private food industry involvement in the 2019 EAT-Lancet report. Scientist Nina Teicholz writes, “[EAT’s] massive level of corporate backing raises serious questions about the interests behind this report.” Specifically, EAT’s Food Reform for Sustainability and Health (FReSH) Initiative includes multi-billion-dollar food industry giants like Pepsico, Danone, Syngenta, and Unilever.

The EAT-Lancet 2.0 Commission tells Food Tank, “EAT works with food system actors from all sectors, including business, civil society, governments (local, national, and global). It believes that alignment across actors, reflecting a diversity of perspectives and plausible pathways is critical to support transformation, notably creating a space for dialogue and discussion between divergent voices.”

Kaiser tells Food Tank that power relationships within the food industry may implicitly influence the Commission’s recommendations. “If we see that roughly 70 percent of all the food consumed globally comes from small producers,” Kaiser says, “that is not necessarily [in] the interest of the big corporations that represent the realities in the food system we have.”

The 2019 report was written by experts “from the rich, industrialized countries of the Global North,” Kaiser mentions. Kaiser advocates that the forthcoming report incorporate a more bottom-up approach. This, he says, should include frameworks for “local, regional, and cultural food identities that would improve the sustainability of food consumption” instead of top-down guidelines from wealthy, industrialized nations.

Kaiser also recommends the Commission not solely focus on nutrition science, or areas of health science, but also include social sciences, “like anthropology, sociology, political sciences, that relate to power structures” within the food system. “What they need to do is to have an appeal, rather than a recipe,” Kaiser says, “an appeal to these diversities and suggestions, how a different path to sustainable food can be developed out of the existing traditions, out of the existing socio-economic relationships or power structures.”