Health News Update: Planetary Diets Work, and are Plant-Based
Hello everyone:
The information in this paper speaks for itself and gives powerful reasons why adopting a plant-based food plan is the healthiest for all of us and the planet, too!
Why did they do the study?
“The modern global food system is a major contributor to the climate change crisis, accounting for an estimated 26% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions,1 approximately 40% of land use, and 70% of global freshwater use.2 Additionally, agriculture threatens natural habitats through deforestation, overfishing and marine disruption, soil acidification, and eutrophication.3 Simultaneously, dietary factors are among the top three risk factors for global deaths among men and women,4 and are the leading behavioral risk factor for attributable burden of cardiovascular disease worldwide.5 Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death both in the USA and globally, with coronary heart disease accounting for more than 9·1 million deaths in 2019, and the leading cause of disability-adjusted life-years in those older than 50 years.6,7 Diet is a crucial target to ameliorate the global burden of cardiovascular disease.8,9”
What did they eat?
“These inter-related issues of climate change and diet-related disease burden underline the need for a more sustainable food system that also provides a healthy diet that meets nutrient needs. Responding to this problem, in 2019, the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems designed a healthy reference diet that would benefit human health based on available evidence from clinical and observational studies, while also being environmentally sustainable by functioning within planetary boundaries crucial for maintaining planetary biophysical equilibrium, including total global cropland use, biodiversity loss, water use, greenhouse-gas emissions, and nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.2 The proposed Planetary Health Diet is high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and unsaturated oils, low in seafood and poultry, and restricts red meat, processed meat, added sugar, refined grains, and starchy vegetables.2 As such, the Planetary Health Diet is a plant-based diet, which aligns with the growing body of evidence highlighting plant-based diets, such as high-quality vegetarian and vegan diets, as beneficial for human and environmental health.10–13”
What happened??
“We found that adherence to the Planetary Health Diet, designed to be a more environmentally sustainable dietary pattern, was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in three large cohorts of men and women in the USA. These observations support the Planetary Health Diet as a promising strategy to promote both human and planetary health.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00170-0/fulltext
Bottom Line:
As it turns out, what one eats will either support health or promote disease. It is that simple…and that important. I have repeatedly observed that those people who fully and wholeheartedly adopt an organic (as much as practical), whole foods, unprocessed food plan are the ones with the best health outcomes.
