The diet to save lives, the planet and feed us all?

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

The diet to save lives, the planet and feed us all?

By James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News

17 January 2019

A diet has been developed that promises to save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet.

Scientists have been trying to figure out how we are going to feed billions more people in the decades to come.

Their answer - "the planetary health diet" - does not completely banish meat and dairy.

But it requires a ginormous shift in what we pile onto our plates and turning to foods that we barely eat.

What changes am I going to have to make?

If you eat meat every day then this is the first biggie. For red meat you're looking at a burger a week or a large steak a month and that's your lot.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46865204

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Source: The Lancet

Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

Published: January 16, 2019

Executive Summary

Food systems have the potential to nurture human health and support environmental sustainability, however our current trajectories threaten both. The EAT–Lancet Commission addresses the need to feed a growing global population a healthy diet while also defining sustainable food systems that will minimise damage to our planet.

The Commission quantitively describes a universal healthy reference diet, based on an increase in consumption of healthy foods (such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, and nuts), and a decrease in consumption of unhealthy foods (such as red meat, sugar, and refined grains) that would provide major health benefits, and also increase the likelihood of attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. This is set against the backdrop of defined scientific boundaries that would ensure a safe operating space within six Earth systems, towards sustaining a healthy planet.

An Editorial highlights the Lancet’s focus on nutrition in 2019, linking this EAT–Lancet Commission and an upcoming Commission on the Global Syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change.

https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/EAT

Full Text

[Hassler]

1. That's basically my diet--better for health, for the planet and for those with less.

[hunter]

2. Okay, but what about beer?

[murielm99]

3. I like beer!

[NickB79]

4. Chestnut beer, from permaculture orchards?

https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/chestnut-beer

[hunter]

5. That sounds delicious!

I occasionally brew my own beer and might try something like that.

My wife and I try to live pretty low on the food chain.

My wife is vegetarian, near vegan.

I'm not quite that, coming from a family of enthusiastic ranchers, hunters, and fishers, but I don't eat any meat or dairy products most days.

This last Thanksgiving my wife and I were vegan because she had to work that day so we were not with carnivorous family. No turkey with sausage stuffing.

Some of our family are highly carnivorous, the kill your own meat sort. As a kid I ate quite a few mammals, birds, and fish I'd seen alive, even some I'd killed myself. My heritage is not clear plastic shrink wrap film grocery store carnivore, it's bloody meat, fur, feathers, and scales on the kitchen chopping block carnivore. I know how to turn a mammal, bird, or fish into dinner using a sharp knife and fire.

For my wife and me, our most serious hypocrisy as people living low on the food chain is our dogs, all of them larger, husky and husky plus size, animal shelter rescues of the more troublesome sort, who eat Costco's Kirkland brand dog foods, and various leftovers.

I don't expect our dogs to be vegetarians any more than I'd expect it of many of my own family, especially the older folk who still remember the no-meat days of the Great Depression and World War II rationing.

My own adult food security blanket is having a big bag of rice and a big bag of lentils in the pantry. And olive oil, or if that's unaffordable, canola oil. From those three basics and stone soup serendipity a good nutritious meal is almost always possible.

Potatoes, other grains, other nuts and legumes, other oils work as well.