Say what? Your go-to glossary for sustainability and food systems jargon

Have you ever found yourself nodding along in a conversation about the food system, wondering what half the words actually mean? You’re not alone. Even the phrase “food system” can be tricky to define. And when terms like regenerative agriculture or traceability start flying around, it can feel like a whole new language. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

This article explains key terms about how our food choices affect people and the planet. Each definition will help you feel confident joining the conversation about fairer, tastier, and more sustainable food. Firstly, we’ll look at some core concepts that explain what the food system actually is. Let’s get started.  

1. The big picture

Food system

The food system means all the people, places, and activities involved in food, from start to finish. For example, a simple loaf of bread links many parts of the food system: farmers growing wheat, mills grinding it into flour, bakeries making bread, truck drivers transporting it, shops selling it, and households eating it. 

The food system even includes:

• Scientists developing seeds that can survive hotter weather 
• Engineers designing packaging
• Marketers creating appealing labels with catchy phrases
• Government workers setting food safety rules
• Teachers giving classes about healthy eating. 

All these parts (and many more) work together to shape what food we have, how much it costs, and how it affects the planet, our bodies, and our communities.

Supply chain

The supply chain is the route food takes from the person who grows it to the person who eats it. It involves multiple steps such as harvesting, packaging, shipping, and retail. 

Most of our food arrives just in time, reaching shops exactly when needed. For example, exotic fruits like pineapples or mangoes are often picked when they’re still a bit unripe, so they can travel long distances without spoiling. By the time they reach the store, they have ripened to perfect sweetness and texture. This careful timing helps keep food fresh and nutritious while reducing waste.

However, relying on food arriving just in time also makes supply chains vulnerable. If there’s a disruption like a pandemic, extreme weather, or a blocked shipping route, there’s little extra stock to fall back on. This can lead to empty shelves, food shortages, or sudden price spikes.¹

Food security

Food security means that everyone has reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food to live a healthy and active life. It’s not just about having enough calories to eat, but also about making sure the food is safe and healthy.²

When food security is strong, communities are healthier, and people can thrive without worrying about hunger or poor nutrition.

Dive deeper in our article: What food security really means 

2. How our food is produced

Industrial agriculture

Thanks to industrial agriculture, we actually make enough food for everyone — it just doesn’t always reach the people who need it most. 

Put simply, industrial agriculture is large-scale farming focused on producing as much food as possible. But it also:

• Uses lots of resources like land, water, and energy.
• Creates stressful conditions for farm animals — about 75% of them live on “factory farms.”⁴
• Contributes to climate change and harms wildlife because of things like cutting down forests for animal feed and using fertilisers that burn through lots of fossil fuels.
• Pollutes the air and water with pesticides (chemicals that kill bugs or weeds) and fertilisers (added to soil to help plants grow).
• Isn’t fair to farmers: many work really hard but still struggle with debt.⁵ 
• Relies on monocultures, which means growing only one type of crop over a large area. If that crop fails, it threatens our food supply.⁶
• Harms soil health because of heavy machines, too many animals on the same land, and synthetic chemicals.

Discover why healthy soil is so important for food and farming. 

Regenerative agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is about growing food in ways that actually help the planet. There’s no one-size-fits-all method, but most regenerative farmers focus on building healthy, living soil. Healthy soil acts like a natural sponge, capturing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it safely underground where it supports plants, animals, and people. This could help slow down climate change while growing nutritious food.

To make the soil healthier, regenerative farmers plant special crops that protect and nourish the soil, grow many different plants together, and carefully raise animals outside on the land. They also reduce digging and ploughing of the soil, allowing tiny creatures and helpful microbes to thrive and keep the land healthy.⁸ 

Discover more in our guide to regenerative agriculture 

Organic farming 

Organic farming is a bit like regenerative farming’s older cousin. Both aim to grow healthy food by working with nature, but organic farming follows clearer rules that ensure food is grown naturally and responsibly.

These rules can vary slightly depending on where you live. For example, all European Union countries follow the same organic regulations, but in the USA or Japan, the standards are slightly different. 

Organic farming rules include:

• Limiting man-made pesticides and fertilisers. Instead, they use natural methods to control pests and weeds, such as bringing in helpful insects that eat the bad guys.  
• Not using genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These are plants or animals whose genes have been changed in a lab to give them new traits, like some types of corn that resist diseases.
• Keeping soil healthy by changing crops each season and adding compost to enrich the land.
• Promoting biodiversity by encouraging a variety of plants and animals on the farm.
• Raising animals without antibiotics or growth hormones. These are chemicals sometimes given to prevent illness, make animals grow faster or produce more milk.¹⁰

Alternative proteins

Alternative proteins offer new and creative ways to produce meat, dairy and eggs. Alongside regenerative and organic farming, they aim to keep feeding people while taking care of the planet. For example:¹²

• Plant-based proteins made from peas, soy, beans, or other plants, used in vegetarian burgers, sausages, and dairy alternatives such as oat milk.
• Fermented protein foods like mycoprotein, a protein-rich fungus often used in meat-free products that has a texture similar to chicken.
• Cultivated meat, which is real animal meat grown from cells in labs without raising or slaughtering animals. Cultivated meat is still emerging but is starting to become available in some places like Singapore and the USA.¹³

Alternative proteins help to provide delicious, nutritious foods with a much lighter environmental footprint than traditional animal farming. 

3. Environmental impact of food 

Carbon footprint

A carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that come from making or doing something. These gases trap heat and warm up the planet. 

Our food has a carbon footprint because growing, processing, and sending it around the world releases greenhouse gases. For example, producing a burger means a lot of emissions because:

• Cows and other animals produce methane gas when they digest food, and their manure releases even more emissions if it isn’t handled carefully.¹⁴
• Cutting down trees to grow animal feed is a big problem, especially in the Amazon rainforest. When those trees come down, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and climate change gets worse.
• Using trucks and machines to feed, care for, and transport animals uses fuel and creates pollution.

Water footprint 

A water footprint measures the total amount of freshwater that is used or impacted to produce something. The water footprint of food includes all the water needed to grow crops, hydrate and feed animals, process ingredients, and clean equipment. 

Different foods have very different water footprints; for example, producing meat and dairy often uses or impacts much more water than growing fruits and vegetables. That’s because animals need water for drinking and also to grow their food.¹⁶

You can find out how to reduce your water footprint here.

Biodiversity loss 

Biodiversity is essential for a healthy food system. It’s all about the incredible variety of plants, animals, insects, and microbes all around us. For example:

• Biodiverse soils have plenty of worms and beneficial microbes to help crops grow. 
• Biodiverse insect life means pollinators for our food. (Think bees, butterflies, or even beetles). 
• Plenty of birds help keep pest insects under control. There’s nothing like a flock of swallows to eat up locusts before they can destroy our crops. 

At the moment, food production is one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide, often through deforestation (clearing trees) and land conversion (changing natural land to farmland).¹⁷

4. How food affects us

Ultra-processed foods

Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) have been all over the news for the last few years. But what does UPF really mean?  

UPFs are foods that have been heavily changed from their original form, often packed with refined ingredients and additives like emulsifiers (to improve food texture) and preservatives (to make it last longer). 

If you look at the ingredients list and find things that you couldn’t buy in your average supermarket, it’s most likely an ultra-processed food. Think snacks, sugary drinks, instant meals, and fast food, which are all designed to be tasty, convenient, and long-lasting.¹⁸

Gut health 

Our gut is home to a bustling community of trillions of tiny microbes, like bacteria, that play a huge role in keeping us healthy. (These microbes are known as your gut microbiome). 

A healthy microbiome is the foundation of a healthy gut. It helps us digest food, supports our immune system, and even influences our mood and energy. 

Gut health isn’t just about what we eat; it’s about the whole environment inside our digestive system. Factors like stress, sleep, medications, and lifestyle all affect how well our gut microbes do their job.²⁰

Find out more about how gut health influences your mental wellbeing 

Non-communicable disease

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are illnesses that don’t spread from person to person but develop over time, often influenced by factors such as diet, genetics, physical activity, and stress. Within this wider group, diet-related diseases are a major category. For example, obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain cancers are all diet-related and non-communicable diseases.²² 

 In other words, what we eat daily has a strong impact on our risk of developing these conditions. Diets rich in whole, nutritious foods can help protect us, while frequent consumption of processed and ultra-processed foods may increase the risk.²³

Discover more in our article about preventing diet-related diseases 

Ethical Sourcing 

Ethical sourcing means ensuring the people who grow our food are treated fairly and work in safe conditions. Unfortunately, many food workers face problems like unfair contracts, unsafe environments, and even modern slavery.²⁵

Choosing ethically sourced food supports fair wages, workers’ rights, and environmentally friendly farming. It’s about making fairness as important as taste and nutrition, and it helps people and the planet thrive. 

Food loss and food waste

While many people work in unsafe conditions and our food system has huge environmental impacts, the real tragedy is that so much food still gets lost or wasted: 

• Food loss means food never reaches the place where it can be sold. It happens earlier in the supply chain: during harvesting, storage, transport, or processing.
• Food waste happens after it gets to the place where people could buy it. For example, when food in a supermarket passes its sell by date. Or when we forget a cabbage in the back of the fridge and have to bin it.²⁷ 

Still curious? Read about how Europe could save money and reduce food waste. 

Knowledge is power

Understanding the language of food systems and sustainability reveals the bigger story behind what we eat every day. By learning this essential vocabulary, we gain insight into the challenges and opportunities for building a fairer, healthier, and more sustainable food future.

Knowledge is the first step toward meaningful change. The next is connecting with like-minded people and becoming part of the solution. With these words in your toolkit, you’re ready to join the conversation and make a real difference.