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"The banquet is in the first bite." Taking this adage to heart will help you enjoy your food and eat more slowly. No other bite will taste as good as the first, and every subsequent bite will progressively diminish in satisfaction. Economists call this the law of diminishing marginal utility, and it argues for savoring the first few bites and stopping sooner than you otherwise might. For as you go on, you'll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.

If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.

Over 1% of the world's total GHG footprint could be saved by simple improvements to the way rice is usually grown. This is a big untold story. It has nothing to do with the fossil fuel used by tractors, lorries, boats or any other parts of the supply chain. Specifically, what is needed is more judicious use of fertiliser and not flooding paddy fields22. Paddy field methane is about 6% of all greenhouse gas emissions from the food supply chain. I've seen photos of rivers in China that are bright green from so much excess fertiliser; the yield is probably actually suffering from over application.

Junk food, for example, drives our reward systems into a frenzy. After spending hundreds of thousands of years hunting and foraging for food in the wild, the human brain has evolved to place a high value on salt, sugar, and fat. Such foods are often calorie-dense and they were quite rare when our ancient ancestors were roaming the savannah. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, eating as much as possible is an excellent strategy for survival.

Food transport only really becomes a big problem when things get put on an aeroplane. UK examples of this can include grapes and berries from California, fresh tuna from the Indian Ocean, baby vegetables from Africa and, perhaps worst of all, asparagus all the way from Peru. (You can't eat flowers, but many of them also travel on planes so the same rule applies.)

It can take twenty minutes before your brain gets the word that your belly is full; that means that if you take less than twenty minutes to finish a meal, the sensation of satiety will arrive too late to be of any use. So slow down and pay attention to what your body--and not just your sense of sight--is telling you. This is what your grandparents were getting at with the adage "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach."

putting food on a boat, even from the other side of the world, can enable a relatively sustainable food supply. What turns out to be a fairly small transport energy demand comes in return for an important flow of nutrients from places with plenty of sun and fertile land to highly populated places that are unable to meet their own food needs. Nor are a few hundred road miles a disaster, although the fewer the better, especially when it comes to heavy stuff like beer.

How can we produce enough food for 9.7 billion of us in 2050? As we have seen, the priorities are (1) to reduce human-edible food being fed to animals, (2) to cut waste, (3) to keep biofuels in check and (4) the sensitive application of new technologies.

The single most important change will be an amazingly simple dietary shift towards less meat and dairy consumption, with a particular focus on reducing beef.

What happens to the food we grow? Some 1320 kcal are lost or wasted, 810 kcal go to biofuels and a massive 1740 kcal are fed to animals.

At the global level, we grow 5940 kcals per person per day. That's nearly two and a half times as much as the 2350 kcals per day that the average person needs to eat to be healthy.

"The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead."

Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.

"Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals]."

Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

Eat only foods that will eventually rot.

Say 'no' to second helpings.

Reduce your unhealthy habits - perhaps introduce a 'chocolate and wine at weekends only' rule.