A new study shows that governments around the world are doing a “shockingly bad” job of recommending healthy and environmentally sustainable diets to their citizens. Research published in the British Medical Journal BMJ looked at the official food guides of 85 countries and found that only two countries, Sierra Leone and Indonesia, are on track to meet UN goals for improved health and fighting the climate crisis. Adopting higher dietary standards could save millions of lives every year and significantly reduce emissions.
Our diet and food systems are responsible for 33% of global GHG emissions, according to the UN IPCC. Current diets are responsible for high rates of preventable disease (some cancers, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes), high early mortality rates and billions of dollars in healthcare costs. The study says that current diets in most countries are neither healthy nor environmentally sustainable.
“Countries are surprisingly bad in helping their populations to eat what they say is a good diet,” lead researcher Marco Springmann, Oxford University told The Guardian. “It was really shocking.”
The comprehensive study found that people are eating more red and processed meat than recommended by national or World Health Organization guidelines, as well as too few fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts and whole grains in all but a few countries.
“If everybody around the world followed the national dietary guidelines of either the USA or the UK, then food-related emissions would exceed the food-system limits for avoiding dangerous levels of climate change by more than three times,” Springmann said in a BMJ commentary, ”Most governments shy away from providing clear recommendations on limiting the consumption of [meat and dairy], despite their exceptionally high emissions and resource use.” The study looked at the health and climate impacts of three types of diets: those recommended in national dietary guidelines; what people actually eat; and the “planetary health” diet.
The planetary health diet was developed by the EAT-Lancet Commission in 2019 and is a blueprint for radically improving our track record on preventable disease and deaths and fighting the climate crisis. The plan requires that red meat and sugar consumption be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts must double, at a global level. The impact on developed world eating habits is the most significant. For example, North Americans would need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils to be consistent with the standard.
The BMJ study shows that the planetary health diet would deliver huge health and environmental benefits. If adopted globally, it would reduce millions of preventable deaths and cut GHG emissions by 13%. For example, annual avoidable deaths would fall by 78,000 - 104,000 in the UK, 480,000 - 585,000 in the US and 1.1 - 1.8 million people in China.
While this widespread adoption is unrealistic in the short term e.g., the researchers recognize that the “planetary health” diet is not affordable for some low income countries without significant support for healthier food systems and diets. However, it does show the huge scale of the potential benefits and therefore the urgency to address the issue.
“A reform of national dietary guidelines that takes into account both health and environmental aspects is urgently needed,” Springmann said. The researchers recommend much stricter limits for meat and dairy, both for health and environmental reasons, and more dietary options based on plenty of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes. And these guidelines need to be supported by targeted health promotion programs to spur adoption.
Canada revised its national dietary guidelines in 2019 to reduce the emphasis on meat and dairy and increased the focus on plant-based foods but, like most nations in the study, the food guide still falls short of the health/climate standards of the “planetary health” diet.