Eating the planet's best foods could help you live longer, study finds

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Closely Earth-Friendly Meals mainly Fruits, vegetables and whole grains A new study suggests that this could reduce humans' risk of premature death by nearly a third and dramatically reduce planet-destroying greenhouse gas emissions.

“Eating more plant-based foods and less animal-based and highly processed foods is good for people and good for the planet,” said Dr. David Katz, an expert in preventive and lifestyle medicine who was not involved in the study.

“This paper reinforces the same message: Adherence to dietary patterns that are conducive to the health and sustainability of the planet is associated with a significant reduction in all-cause mortality,” Katz said in an email. True Health Initiativea global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine

Food production plays a major role in the climate crisis. Livestock for foodFor example, agriculture uses vast amounts of land and contributes to deforestation, biodiversity loss and water pollution, experts say.

Ruminating animals release harmful gases that can have alarming effects on the environment. Burping and pooping Cows, sheep and goats emit methane, a greenhouse gas. 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide According to the United Nations Environment Programme, global warming has been increasing for 20 years.

One Adult cattle, For example, they can burp and fart up to 500 litres of methane a day. Adding these together, we get Approximately 15% According to experts, it accounts for 1% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions.

However, studies have shown that eating an earth-friendly diet could reduce land use by 51%, greenhouse gas emissions by 29% and fertiliser use by 21%, all while extending people's life spans.

“Changing our diet can help slow climate change, and the good news is that what's healthiest for the planet is also best for us,” said corresponding author Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

“For every leading cause of death we looked at, people who were better adhering to a sustainable diet had a lower risk,” Willett said.

Food for people and the planet

In 2019, EAT-Lancet Commission, The research team, made up of 37 leading scientists from 16 countries, devised a diet with the twin goals of maximizing human health while reducing the environmental impact of feeding billions of people.

The resulting eating plan emphasized small amounts of meat and dairy and a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and other plant-based proteins.

The study, published Monday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, analyzed dietary data from more than 200,000 women and men to see how it matched up with the Eat-Transet dietary guidelines.

All of the people were taking part in a long-term government study. Nurses' Health Study I and II And that Health Professional Follow-up Survey The participants, who had no major illnesses at the start of the study, completed dietary questionnaires every four years for 34 years, providing the researchers with a huge amount of data.

The researchers scored diets based on their intake of 15 food groups. Sustainable foods require fewer total resources to grow and include whole grains, tubers, vegetables, fruits, legumes, soy foods and unsaturated vegetable oils such as olive oil.

Foods that require a lot of land, such as beef and, to a lesser extent, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens, were also measured, as was the intake of added sugars. Many known health risks.

Willett said there have been previous studies looking at the impact of planetary health diets, but nothing comparable to the scope of this study. “This is a much larger, longer-term study that has repeatedly assessed diets over 30 years, so it has more statistical granularity,” he said.

A study found that the top 10% of people who followed the Eat Lancet Planet diet were 30% less likely to die prematurely from any cause than the bottom 10%.

Additionally, those who followed the Planetary Diet most closely had a 28 percent lower risk of death from neurodegenerative disease, a 14 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, a 10 percent lower risk of death from cancer and a 47 percent lower risk of death from respiratory disease, and this was true even for non-smokers, Willett said.

“The results of this study show how human and planetary health are linked. Healthy diets improve environmental sustainability, which in turn is essential for human health and well-being. Of all the people on the planet,” he added.