Editor’s note: Several weeks after this article was published, Simen Sletsjøe, a spokesman for the EAT-Lancet Commission, contacted The New Food Economy to contest the British Medical Journal’s report that the World Health Organization (WHO) had “pulled out of sponsoring” a Geneva, Switzerland launch event for the diet.

In his email, Sletsjøe directed The New Food Economy to a statement saying WHO had not “withdrawn its support” of the Commission, because the Commission “has never sought to be, nor been sponsored or endorsed by any intergovernmental agency, including WHO.”

The New Food Economy contacted the British Medical Journal (BMJ) for clarification. Zosia Kmietowicz, a news editor, assured us the report was “wholly legitimate,” citing “copies of the letters” and “notices of WHO’s planned sponsorship of the event in Geneva.” She did not share these documents with us.

The New Food Economy also reached out to WHO, who had not responded to an inquiry before the article first published, to clarify. In a series of emails, Paul David Garwood, a WHO spokesman, confirmed the Commission’s statement, and said WHO had “never sponsored, hosted, or organized the event.”

Garwood’s correspondence conflicts with the Commission’s website, which cites WHO as an “organizing partner” of the Geneva event, as well as an event invitation that bears the WHO’s logo, which was posted online by the Italian ambassador. The BMJ also continues to stand by its reporting.

We will continue to follow this story.

British Medical Journal reports that the World Health Organization (WHO), the arm of the United Nations charged with monitoring global health, has dropped its sponsorship of the EAT-Lancet Commission’s planetary health diet—a much-ballyhooed, well-publicized attempt at saving the planet through the food we eat.

The organization pulled out of sponsoring a launch event in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 28, after Gian Lorenzo Cornado, Italy’s ambassador to the United Nations, questioned the diet’s impact on public health. The ambassador stated that radical, drastic limitations on animal livestock production—the commission’s primary recommendation—would cause economic hardship in developing countries. In a press release, the “permanent mission,” as the office is known, also suggested the report was not sufficiently independent, and aimed for nothing less than the “total elimination of the freedom of choice” by consumers.

“A standard diet for the whole planet, regardless of the age, sex, metabolism, general state of health and eating habits of each person, has no scientific justification at all,” Cornado wrote. “Moreover, it would mean the destruction of millenary healthy traditional diets which are a full part of the cultural heritage and social harmony in many countries.”