Rodríguez-Huerta et al., 2025

Research on sustainable diets has primarily focused on human and planetary health, neglecting workers in food value chains despite their high global employment and forced labour rates. Combining nationally representative food intake data and forced labour risk data for food commodities, we compared the risk of forced labour embedded in five diets in the USA—current diets, three US-specific recommended dietary patterns and the EAT–Lancet Planetary Health Diet. We find that forced labour risk is highest in the Mediterranean-Style and US-Style recommended patterns and lowest in the Planetary Health Diet pattern, with the biggest differences driven by intake of fruit, dairy and red meat. Protein foods account for nearly half of the risk in all patterns, except for the Healthy Vegetarian recommended pattern. These results point to potential synergies and trade-offs between human health, environmental sustainability and social well-being that should be considered in dialogue and action on sustainable diets. Research on sustainable diets has primarily focused on human and planetary health, neglecting workers in food value chains. This study quantifies the risk of forced labour embedded in five different diets in the USA, underscoring the need to integrate such risk in sustainable diet transition efforts.