Food "reduces mortality and saves the earth"



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Food market

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A group of scientists developed a diet by reducing the number of deaths and providing food to 10 billion people, all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet.

Scientists have tried to explore how to feed billions more people over the next few decades.

Their answer was: "Planetary health plan", which does not completely exclude meat and milk.

But this system requires a huge shift, from what we accumulate in our dishes, to the foods we barely eat.

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What is the effect of food on the environment?

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What changes will I make?

If you eat meat every day, it's the first hurdle. For red meat, you can eat a piece of burger once a week or a big steak during the month, that's a maximum.

But you can eat a range of "starchy vegetables", such as potatoes or cassava, which are widely eaten in Africa.

So what is the diet in detail?

If you stick to this system, that's all you can do every day:

1. Nuts: 50 grams a day.

2 – beans, lentils and other legumes: 75 grams.

3. Fish: 28 grams.

4 eggs: 13 grams.

5. Meat: 14 grams for red meat, 29 grams of chicken meat.

6. Carbohydrates: 232 grams for cereals such as bread and rice and 50 grams for starchy foods.

7 – Dairy products: 250 grams, or the equivalent of a cup of milk.

8 vegetables: 300 grams, fruits 200 grams.

The diet also extends to 31 grams of sugar and about 50 grams of oils such as olive oil.

Would it have a terrible taste?

Professor Walter Willett, a researcher at Harvard, says this is not the case. After his childhood on a farm, he ate three slices of meat a day, becoming largely compatible with the planet's diet.

"There is a great diversity in this diet, you can take these foods and mix them in a thousand different ways," he said.

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Molly Katzen

Legend of the image

These are some food dishes, which are compatible with the planetary diet

Is it real or fiction?

The proposed system requires dietary changes in almost every corner of the world.

Europeans and North Americans will have to reduce their consumption of red meat to a large extent, while in Asia they will have to reduce their consumption of fish and that in Africa they should reduce their consumption of starchy vegetables. .

"Never before has humanity tried to change its diet, on this scale and so quickly," said Lynn Gordon, director of the Stockholm Center for Adaptive Energy at the University of California. Stockholm University.

"Whether fictional or not, the imagination is not necessarily bad, it's time to dream of a good world."

According to the researchers, taxing red meat may be necessary to persuade us to change our diet.

Who invented this system?

A group of 37 scientists from around the world, members of the Lancet Medical Committee's EAT-Lancet Committee, helped design the scheme.

These scientists are a mix of agricultural scientists, climate change and nutrition. It took them two years to reach their conclusions, published in the Lancet.

Why do we need a diet for about 10 billion people?

The world's population reached 7 billion in 2011 and now stands at around 7.7 billion.

This figure is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 and will continue to increase.

Will it reduce deaths?

The researchers say the system will save the lives of about 11 million people, who die each year.

This figure is due to the expected decrease in the number of people suffering from diseases caused by unhealthy diets, such as heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer.

These diseases are the most deadly in developed countries.

So will this system save the planet?

The scientists aim to feed more people, including:

  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible.
  • Prevent the extinction of any species of living, endangered organism.
  • Non-expansion of agricultural land.
  • Conservation of water.

But it's not enough to change diets.

To achieve this goal, it is also necessary to halve food losses and increase the amount of food produced from the current agricultural area.

Why does not the system prevent you from eating meat?

"If we only reduce emissions, we can say that everyone will be a vegetarian," says Willett.

But he said that it was not clear whether the vegetarian diet was healthier or not.

So what is happening now?

The EAT-Lancet Committee will pass these results to governments around the world and to entities such as the World Health Organization, to see if they can start changing the way we eat.

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