P<\/span>eople in all countries around the world are eating more starchy vegetables (such as potatoes and cassava) than recommended, with intakes ranging from between one and a half times above recommended levels in South Asia and by seven and a half times in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n B<\/span>ased on a dietary intake of 2,500 calories a day the Lancet recommends that adults eat no more than 14 grams of red meat a day – equivalent to one rasher of bacon. They are allowed more chicken (up to 58g a day),\u00a0as well as\u00a0fish and seafood (up to 100g). It also recommends up to 100g a day of dairy, such as cheese and whole milk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Adults should also eat around 300g of fresh vegetables a day, which should include equal amounts of green, leafy vegetables such as cabbage, red and orange vegetables such as carrots and tomatoes and other vegetables.<\/p>\n In terms of carbohydrates the diet should be made up of more whole grains such as brown rice \u2013\u00a0up to 232g a day \u2013\u00a0and fewer starchy vegetables such as potato, up to 39g. The diet does allow added sugars but just 31g a day.<\/p>\n Anyone\u00a0changing to\u00a0this diet would see an increase in their intake of most nutrients \u2013 as well as boosting consumption of healthy mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids and reducing consumption of unhealthy saturated fats.<\/p>\n The diet also has the right amounts of essential micronutrients, such as iron, zinc, folate\u00a0and vitamin A, as well as calcium.<\/p>\n The consumption of meat is increasingly implicated in climate change with a report last year urging people to give up red meat completely<\/a> to save the planet.<\/p>\n F<\/span>ood production is responsible for up to 30 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions and 70 per cent of freshwater use, the report highlights. And agriculture occupies up to 40 per cent of global land.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he report acknowledges that a complete overhaul of the global food system would be tough and would require international cooperation, particularly on the use of land and oceans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For example, there should be no further expansion of agricultural land into natural ecosystems and forests.<\/p>\n But the authors also say that for the new diet to be a success healthy food must be affordable and easily available.<\/p>\n One of the report authors Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City, University of London, said: \u201cWe need a significant overhaul, changing the global food system on a scale not seen before in ways appropriate to each country\u2019s circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile this is uncharted policy territory and these problems are not easily fixed, this goal is within reach and there are opportunities to adapt international, local and business policies.<\/p>\n \u201cThe scientific targets we have devised for a healthy, sustainable diet are an important foundation which will underpin and drive this change.\u201d<\/p>\n . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n Planetary health diet: Developed countries must cut red meat eating by 80% to protect Earth<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Plan to minimise climate change and rainforest destruction while preventing millions of premature deaths would require developed nations’ meat eating to fall by 80 per cent<\/em><\/p>\n Alex Matthews-King, Health Correspondent, The Independent, London, 16 Jan 2019<\/p>\n Scientists have drawn up a \u201cplanetary health diet<\/a>\u201d to safeguard the Earth from environmental disaster and ensure enough food is available for its booming population to stay healthy.<\/p>\n This\u00a0would require\u00a0red meat<\/a> consumption to halve across the world but fall by more than 80 per cent in developed\u00a0countries like the US and UK, the study says.<\/p>\n Dairy and sugar consumption\u00a0would also need to decrease drastically, while\u00a0the proportion of nuts, fruit, vegetables and legumes like lentils and chickpeas needs to double.<\/p>\n If this is achieved it could minimise the damaging effects of climate change<\/a>, deforestation<\/a>, and the\u00a0loss of animal and plant species while\u00a0preventing\u00a011 million premature deaths a year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are currently getting this seriously wrong,\u201d Professor Tim Lang, one of the authors from City, University of London, said. \u201cWe need a significant overhaul, changing the global food system on a scale not seen before in ways appropriate to each country\u2019s circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n Health campaigners have already called for meat taxes to save lives<\/a>, but the Eat-Lancet Commission is the first to propose a diet on environmental grounds as well.\u00a0It brought together\u00a037 experts from 16 countries specialising in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, economics and politics to look at how a balance could be struck.<\/p>\n The solution, based on three years of statistical modelling, is a diet consisting of around 35 per cent\u00a0of calories<\/a> obtained from whole grains and tubers, and protein mostly derived from plants.<\/p>\n While permitting variations based on local need and culture, the recommendations, published in the \u200bLancet <\/em>medical journal would require meat to become a weekly or fortnightly treat rather than a daily staple.<\/p>\n The shift to sustainable food production requires food waste to be cut in half and no more additional land to be turned over to agriculture \u2013 as is happening with rainforests destroyed for cattle ranching<\/a> and palm oil production.<\/p>\n To achieve this livestock and fishing subsidies would need to be abolished, with the expansion of marine conservation zones and changes to shopping habits in developed nations \u2013 as well as protections for low income groups.<\/p>\n Professor Johan Rockstrom, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany \u2013 who co-led the commission, said this would require \u201cnothing less than a new global agricultural revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no silver bullet for combating harmful food production practices, but by defining and quantifying a safe operating space for food systems, diets can be identified that will nurture human health and support environmental sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n Free market groups and the meat and dairy industry accused the authors of pushing for the \u201cnanny state\u201d and said\u00a0meat and dairy were a key part of good dietary health after the\u00a0Lancet\u00a0<\/em>report found\u00a0key claims, such as dairy being a integral for bone strength, were often not borne out in large studies.<\/p>\n Alexander Anton,\u00a0secretary general of the European Dairy Association, said: \u201c[The\u00a0report] goes to the extreme to create maximum attention, but we must be more responsible when making serious dietary recommendations.\u201c<\/p>\n “Milk protein has been recognised scientifically, and in EU legislation, as the most valuable protein for human consumption,” he added<\/p>\n . . .\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n New ‘planetary health diet’ can save lives and the planet, major review suggests<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n By Nina Avramova, CNN, January 16, 2019<\/p>\n An international team of scientists has developed a diet it says can improve health while ensuring sustainable food production to reduce further damage to the planet.<\/p>\n The “planetary health diet” is based on cutting red meat and sugar consumption in half and upping intake of fruits, vegetables and nuts.<\/p>\n And it can prevent up to 11.6 million premature deaths without harming the planet, says the report published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet.<\/p>\n The authors warn that a global change in diet and food production is needed as 3 billion people across the world are malnourished — which includes those who are under and overnourished — and food production is overstepping environmental targets, driving climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.<\/p>\n The world’s population is set to reach 10 billion people by 2050; that growth, plus our current diet and food production habits, will “exacerbate risks to people and planet,” according to the authors.<\/p>\n “The stakes are very high,” Dr. Richard Horton, editor in chief at The Lancet, said of the report’s findings, noting that 1 billion people live in hunger and 2 billion people eat too much of the wrong foods.<\/p>\n Horton believes that “nutrition has still failed to get the kind of political attention that is given to diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria.”<\/p>\n “Using best available evidence” of controlled feeding studies, randomized trials and large cohort studies, the authors came up with a new recommendation, explained Dr. Walter Willett, lead author of the paper and a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health.<\/p>\n The report suggests five strategies to ensure people can change their diets and not harm the planet in doing so: incentivizing people to eat healthier, shifting global production toward varied crops, intensifying agriculture sustainably, stricter rules around the governing of oceans and lands, and reducing food waste.<\/p>\n The ‘planetary health diet’<\/strong><\/p>\n To enable a healthy global population, the team of scientists created a global reference diet, that they call the “planetary health diet,” which is an ideal daily meal plan for people over the age of 2, that they believe will help reduce chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes, as well as environmental degradation.<\/p>\n The diet breaks down the optimal daily intake of whole grains, starchy vegetables, fruit, dairy, protein, fats and sugars, representing a daily total calorie intake of 2500.<\/p>\n They recognize the difficulty of the task, which will need “substantial” dietary shifts on a global level, needing the consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar to decrease by more than 50%. In turn, consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes must increase more than two-fold, the report says.<\/p>\n The diet advises people consume 2,500 calories per day, which is slightly more than what people are eating today, said Willett. People should eat a “variety of plant-based foods, low amounts of animal-based foods, unsaturated rather than saturated fats, and few refined grains, highly processed foods and added sugars,” he said.<\/p>\n Regional differences are also important to note. For example, countries in North America eat almost 6.5 times the recommended amount of red meat, while countries in South Asia eat 1.5 times the required amount of starchy vegetables.<\/p>\n “Almost all of the regions in the world are exceeding quite substantially” the recommended levels of red meat, Willett said.<\/p>\n The health and environmental benefits of dietary changes like these are known, “but, until now, the challenge of attaining healthy diets from a sustainable food system has been hampered by a lack of science-based guidelines, said Howard Frumkin, Head of UK biomedical research charity The Wellcome Trust’s Our Planet Our Health program. The Wellcome Trust funded the research.<\/p>\n “It provides governments, producers and individuals with an evidence-based starting point to work together to transform our food systems and cultures,” he said.<\/p>\n If the new diet were adopted globally, 10.9 to 11.6 million premature deaths could be avoided every year — equating to 19% to 23.6% of adult deaths. A reduction in sodium and an increase in whole grains, nuts, vegetables and fruits contributed the most to the prevention of deaths, according to one of the report’s models.<\/p>\n Making it happen<\/strong><\/p>\n Some scientists are skeptical of whether shifting the global population to this diet can be achieved.<\/p>\n The recommended diet “is quite a shock,” in terms of how feasible it is and how it should be implemented, said Alan Dangour, professor in food and nutrition for global health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. What “immediately makes implementation quite difficult” is the fact that cross-government departments need to work together, he said. Dangour was not involved in the report.<\/p>\n At the current level of food production, the reference diet is not achievable, said Modi Mwatsama, senior science lead (food systems, nutrition and health) at the Wellcome Trust. Some countries are not able to grow enough food because they could be, for example, lacking resilient crops, while in other countries, unhealthy foods are heavily promoted, she said.<\/p>\n Mwatsama added that unless there are structural changes, such as subsidies that move away from meat production, and environmental changes, such as limits on how much fertilizer can be used, “we won’t see people meeting this target.”<\/p>\n To enable populations to follow the reference diet, the report suggests five strategies, of which subsidies are one option. These fit under a recommendation to ensure good governance of land and ocean systems, for example by prohibiting land clearing and removing subsidies to world fisheries, as they lead to over-capacity of the global fishing fleet.<\/p>\n Second, the report further outlines strategies such as incentivizing farmers to shift food production away from large quantities of a few crops to diverse production of nutritious crops.<\/p>\n Healthy food must also be made more accessible, for example low-income groups should be helped with social protections to avoid continued poor nutrition, the authors suggest, and people encouraged to eat healthily through information campaigns.<\/p>\n A fourth strategy suggests that when agriculture is intensified it must take local conditions into account to ensure the best agricultural practices for a region, in turn producing the best crops.<\/p>\n Finally, the team suggests reducing food waste by improving harvest planning and market access in low and middle-income countries, while improving shopping habits of consumers in high-income countries.<\/p>\n Louise Manning, professor of agri-food and supply chain resilience at the Royal Agricultural University, said meeting the food waste reduction target is a “very difficult thing to achieve” because it would require government, communities and individual households to come together.<\/p>\n However, “it can be done,” said Manning, who was not involved in the report, noting the rollback in plastic usage in countries such as the UK.<\/p>\n The planet’s health<\/strong><\/p>\n The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement aimed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Meeting this goal is no longer only about de-carbonizing energy systems by reducing fossil fuels, it’s also about a food transition, said Johan Rockstr\u00f6m, professor of environmental science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, in Sweden, who co-led the study.<\/p>\n “This is urgent,” he said. Without global adaptation of the reference diet, the world “will not succeed with the Paris Climate Agreement.”<\/p>\n A sustainable food production system requires non-greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and nitrous oxide to be limited, but methane is produced during digestion of livestock while nitrous oxides are released from croplands and pastures. But the authors believe these emissions are unavoidable to provide healthy food for 10 billion people. They highlight that decarbonisation of the world’s energy system must progress faster than anticipated, to accommodate this.<\/p>\n Overall, ensuring a healthy population and planet requires combining all strategies, the report concludes — major dietary change, improved food production and technology changes, as well as reduced food waste.<\/p>\n “Designing and operationalising sustainable food systems that can deliver healthy diets for a growing and wealthier world population presents a formidable challenge. Nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution,” said Rockstr\u00f6m, adding that “the solutions do exist.<\/p>\n “It is about behavioral change. It’s about technologies. It’s about policies. It’s about regulations. But we know how to do this.”<\/p>\n
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