Fardet, AnthonyBoland, MikeHong-Minh, HoangDelgado, AméliaHalawany-Darson, RafiaGermond, ArnaudNedelciu, Claudiu EduardKopsahelis, NikolaosDiemeri, ArnaudBaritaux, VirginieGalli, FrancescaRock, Edmond2025-05-052025-05-052025-062211-9124http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/27084Until now, the main targets for improving food system sustainability have been food production and consumers’ behaviors (the first and the last links in the agri-food chain). Food processing has been less studied. This perspective paper aims at addressing food processing as a relevant lever to improve food system sustainability, from producers to consumers. The conclusions and perspectives presented here are based on six round-tables carried out during the 2020-2021 period with an international and multidisciplinary consortium, including French, Portuguese, Norwegian, Greek and New Zealander researchers. Beyond the identification of four emerging topics as perspectives about food processing and sustainability, the consortium reached the following generic conclusions: 1) Highly processed diets have serious impacts on nutrition, public health and the environment on a global scale. Thus, the major challenge today is to develop less processed foods that are tasty, health, safe, accessible, ethical, socially and culturally accepted for nearly ten billion people by 2050 while preserving the environment and limiting wastes; 2) Therefore, food processing sustainability improvements should not only include the optimization of processes via siloed approaches, but also holistic changes, i.e., including all dimensions of healthy sustainable processed foods, and that should be locally co-created with other actors of the agri-food chain. This would mean to importantly relocate food processing at a small scale.engFood processingSustainabilityHolistic approachShort food supply chainsAnimal productsConsumersjournal article2025-04-24cv-prod-447940310.1016/j.gfs.2025.100855