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Human diets inextricably link health and environmental sustainability, and have the potential to nurture both. However, current diets are pushing the Earth beyond its planetary boundaries, while causing ill health. This puts both people and the planet at risk. Providing healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an immediate challenge as the population continues to grow -- projected to reach 10 billion people by -- and get wealthier with the expectation of higher consumption of animal-based foods. To meet this challenge, dietary changes must be combined with improved food production and reduced food waste.
The authors stress that unprecedented global collaboration and commitment will be needed, alongside immediate changes such as refocussing agriculture to produce varied nutrient-rich crops, and increased governance of land and ocean use. While this is unchartered 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.
The scientific targets we have devised for a healthy, sustainable diet are an important foundation which will underpin and drive this change. The Commission is a 3-year project that brings together 37 experts from 16 countries with expertise in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, food systems, economics and political governance. Despite increased food production contributing to improved life expectancy and reductions in hunger, infant and child mortality rates, and global poverty over the past 50 years, these benefits are now being offset by global shifts towards unhealthy diets high in calories, sugar, refined starches and animal-based foods and low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, and fish.
Make fresh fruits and vegetables a bigger part of your diet. Since the mids, the pace and scale of environmental change has grown exponentially. Food production is the largest source of environmental degradation. They often argue that killing animals for food is cruel and unethical since non-animal food sources are plentiful. Not an Irish Times subscriber?
The authors argue that the lack of scientific targets for a healthy diet have hindered efforts to transform the food system. Based on the best available evidence, the Commission proposes a dietary pattern that meets nutritional requirements, promotes health, and allows the world to stay within planetary boundaries. Global targets will need to be applied locally -- for example, countries in North America eat almost 6.
All countries are eating more starchy vegetables potatoes and cassava than recommended with intakes ranging from between 1. More than million people have insufficient food, while many more consume an unhealthy diet that contributes to premature death and disease," says co-lead Commissioner Dr Walter Willett, Harvard University, USA. The food group intake ranges that we suggest allow flexibility to accommodate various food types, agricultural systems, cultural traditions, and individual dietary preferences -- including numerous omnivore, vegetarian, and vegan diets.
The authors estimate that widespread adoption of such a diet would improve intakes of most nutrients -- increasing intake of healthy mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids and reducing consumption of unhealthy saturated fats. It would also increase essential micronutrient intake such as iron, zinc, folate, and vitamin A, as well as calcium in low-income countries , except for vitamin B12 where supplementation or fortification might be necessary in some circumstances.
They also modelled the potential effects of global adoption of the diet on deaths from diet-related diseases. Three models each showed major health benefits, suggesting that adopting the new diet globally could avert between The authors highlight that evidence about diet, human health, and environmental sustainability is continually evolving and includes uncertainty, so they include ranges in their estimates, but are confident of the overall picture. Professor Lang says: "While major transformations to the food system occurred in China, Brazil, Vietnam, and Finland in the 20th century, and illustrate that diets can change rapidly, humanity has never aimed to change the food system this radically at such speed or scale.
People might warn of unintended consequences or argue that the case for action is premature, however, the evidence is sufficient and strong enough to warrant action, and any delay will increase the likelihood of not achieving crucial health and climate goals. Since the mids, the pace and scale of environmental change has grown exponentially.
Food production is the largest source of environmental degradation. To be sustainable, food production must occur within food-related planetary boundaries for climate change, biodiversity loss, land and water use, as well as for nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. However, production must also be sustainably intensified to meet the global population's growing food demands. This will require decarbonising agricultural production by eliminating the use of fossil fuels and land use change losses of CO2 in agriculture.
In addition, zero loss of biodiversity, net zero expansion of agricultural land into natural ecosystems, and drastic improvements in fertiliser and water use efficiencies are needed. The authors estimate the minimum, unavoidable emissions of greenhouse gases if we are to provide healthy food for 10 billion people by [2]. They conclude that non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions of methane and nitrous oxide [3] will remain between 4.
This suggests that the decarbonisation of the world energy system must progress faster than anticipated, to accommodate the need to healthily feed humans without further damaging the planet. Phosphorus use must also be reduced from Based on their estimates, current levels of nitrogen, land and water use may be within the projected boundary from The boundary estimates are subject to uncertainty, and will require continuous update and refinement.
Using these boundary targets, the authors modelled various scenarios to develop a sustainable food system and deliver healthy diets by To stay within planetary boundaries, a combination of major dietary change, improved food production through enhanced agriculture and technology changes [4], and reduced food waste during production and at the point of consumption will be needed, and no single measure is enough to stay within all of the limits.
Nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution. Sustainability of the food system must therefore be defined from a planetary perspective. Five key environmental processes regulate the state of the planet. Our definition of sustainable food production requires that we use no additional land, safeguard existing biodiversity, reduce consumptive water use and manage water responsibly, substantially reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, produce zero carbon dioxide emissions, and cause no further increase in methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
There is no silver bullet for combatting 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. Firstly, policies to encourage people to choose healthy diets are needed, including improving availability and accessibility to healthy food through improved logistics and storage, increased food security, and policies that promote buying from sustainable sources.
Yet, as environmental science has advanced, it has become apparent that the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease. How did such a seemingly small matter of individual consumption move so rapidly from the margins of discussion about sustainability to the center?
To begin with, per-capita meat consumption has more than doubled in the past half-century, even as global population has continued to increase. As a result, the overall demand for meat has increased five-fold. That, in turn, has put escalating pressure on the availability of water, land, feed, fertilizer, fuel, waste disposal capacity, and most of the other limited resources of the planet.
To provide an overview of just how central a challenge this once marginal issue has become, we decided to survey the relevance of meat-eating to each of the major categories of environmental impact that have conventionally been regarded as critical to the sustainability of civilization. A brief summary observation for each category is accompanied by quotes from a range of prominent observers, some of whom offer suggestions about how this difficult subject—not everyone who likes pork chops or ribs is going to switch to tofu without a fight—can be addressed.
Deforestation was the first major type of environmental damage caused by the rise of civilization. Large swaths of forest were cleared for agriculture, which included domestication of both edible plants and animals. In , however, the World Hunger Program at Brown University calculated that recent world harvests, if equitably distributed with no diversion of grain to feeding livestock, could provide a vegetarian diet to 6 billion people, whereas a meat-rich diet like that of people in the wealthier nations could support only 2. In other words, with a present population over 6 billion, that would mean we are already into deficit consumption of land, with the deficit being made up by hauling more fish from the oceans, which are in turn being rapidly fished out.
In Central America, 40 percent of all the rainforests have been cleared or burned down in the last 40 years, mostly for cattle pasture to feed the export market—often for U.
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Meat is too expensive for the poor in these beef-exporting countries, yet in some cases cattle have ousted highly productive traditional agriculture. The Center for International Forestry Research reports that rapid growth in the sales of Brazilian beef has led to accelerated destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Grassland destruction followed, as herds of domesticated animals were expanded and the environments on which wild animals such as bison and antelope had thrived were trampled and replanted with monoculture grass for large-scale cattle grazing.
Grassland covers more land area than any other ecosystem in North America; no other system has suffered such a massive loss of life. Another solution [to grassland depletion in Africa] would be a shift from cattle grazing toward game ranching. Antelopes, unlike cattle, are adapted to semi-arid lands. They do not need to trek daily to waterholes and so cause less trampling and soil compaction…. Antelope dung comes in the form of small, dry pellets, which retain their nitrogen and efficiently fertilize the soil. Cows, in contrast, produce large, flat, wet droppings, which heat up and quickly lose much of their nitrogen in the form of ammonia to the atmosphere….
An experimental game ranch in Kenya has been a great economic success while simultaneously restoring the range. Ehrlich, Anne H.
Ehrlich, and Gretchen C. Fresh water , like land, seemed inexhaustible for most of the first 10 millennia of civilization. But a few years ago, water experts calculated that we humans are now taking half the available fresh water on the planet—leaving the other half to be divided among a million or more species. Since we depend on many of those species for our own survival they provide all the food we eat and oxygen we breathe, among other services , that hogging of water poses a dilemma. If we break it down, species by species, we find that the heaviest water use is by the animals we raise for meat.
One of the easiest ways to reduce demand for water is to reduce the amount of meat we eat. A person on a vegan diet requires only gallons a day.
Schwartz in Judaism and Vegetarianism. The report notes that it takes liters of water to produce enough flour for one loaf of bread in developing countries…but up to 7, liters of water to produce grams of beef. You would use, at that rate, [5,] gallons of water to shower every day for a year.
When you compare that figure, [5,] gallons of water, to the amount the Water Education Foundation calculates is used in the production of every pound of California beef 2, gallons ,you realize something extraordinary. In California today, you may save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for six entire months. Waste disposal , like water supply, seemed to have no practical limitations.
There were always new places to dump, and for centuries most of what was dumped either conveniently decomposed or disappeared from sight.