A Bit of Meat, a Lot of Veg, the Flexitarian Diet to Feed 10bn - Health And Medical Information

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Wednesday, January 23







What changes am I going to have to make?


You can still have a couple of portions of fish and the same of chicken a week, but plants are where the rest of your protein will need to come from. The researchers are recommending nuts and a good helping of legumes every day instead.

There's also a major push on all fruit and veg, which should make up half of every plate of food we eat.

Although there's a cull on "starchy vegetables" such as the humble potato or cassava which is widely eaten in Africa.

So what is the diet in detail?

If you served it all up this is what you would be allowed each day:

* Nuts - 50g a day
* Beans, chickpeas, lentils and other legumes - 75g a day
* Fish - 28g a day
* Eggs - 13g a day (so one and a bit a week)
* Meat - 14g a day of red meat and 29g a day of chicken
* Carbs - whole grains like bread and rice 232g a day and 50g a day of starchy vegetables
* Dairy - 250g - the equivalent of one glass of milk
* Vegetables -(300g) and fruit (200g)

How do your food choices impact on the environment?

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Will it taste awful?

Prof Walter Willet, one of the researchers who is based at Harvard, said no and that after a childhood on a farm eating three portions of red meat a day he was now pretty much in line with the planetary health diet.

"There's tremendous variety there," he said. "You can take those foods and put them together in thousands of different ways. We're not talking about a deprivation diet here, it is healthy eating that is flexible and enjoyable."

Is this for real, or just a fantasy?


"Humanity has never attempted to change the food system at this scale and this speed," said Line Gordon, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, at Stockholm University.

"Whether it's a fantasy or not, a fantasy doesn't have to be bad... it's time to dream of a good world," she says.


Who came up with this?

A group of 37 scientists from around the world were brought together as part of the EAT-Lancet commission.


Why do we need a diet for 10 billion people?

The world population reached seven billion in 2011 and it's now around 7.7 billion. That figure is expected to reach 10 billion around 2050 and will keep on climbing.

Will it save lives?



How bad is farming for the planet?

The use of land for growing food and forestry accounts for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. That's about the same as from electricity and heating, and substantially more than from all the trains, planes and automobiles on the planet.





So will this diet save the planet?

The researchers' aim was to feed more people while:

* minimising greenhouse gas emissions
* preventing any species going extinct
* having no expansion of farmland, and
* preserving water

However, just changing diets is nowhere near enough.


Why isn't meat being banned?

"If we were just minimising greenhouse gases we'd say everyone be vegan," said Prof Willet.


So what happens now?


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