A shift from the consumption of unhealthy food to a greater intake of healthy diets could increase life expectancy and mitigate negative climate impact. The importance <!—more of food for healthy living is undisputed. Humanity has survived through adverse periods in its history by creating, cultivating, and developing nutritional products that have helped to improve its mental and physical conditions. These improvements lead to an increase in population, migration of people to different areas in the world, and consequently expansion of facilities, including land, water, chemicals, and types of machinery, used for food production. The world population has grown steadily in the past 50 years, resulting in an enormous increase in food production, which is having negative impacts on the earth’s environment in this geological period of human history, termed Anthropocene.
A team of researchers from diverse institutions named the EAT-Lancet Commission proposes methods of sustainable food systems that could be implemented to provide 10 billion people with healthy diets by 2050. These methods are integrated into a common framework, which could be adapted globally in each country as a safe operating space for food systems that integrate healthy diets with environmental sustainability.
In connection with the environment, conventional food production contributes to climate change through an increase in global temperature, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, and chemical pollution. About humanity, unhealthy diets reduce life expectancy and cause morbidity more than unsafe sex, alcohol, drugs, and tobacco combined.
The EAT-Lancet Commission evaluated the nutritional values of a variety of food products to create healthy reference diets for daily consumption that have a positive impact on both the environment and humanity by reducing environmentally hazardous emissions and total mortality. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and unsaturated oils are the core components of the healthy reference diets that also include a moderate amount of seafood and poultry as well as a low amount of red meat, processed meat, added sugar, refined grains, and starchy vegetables.
To successfully implement sustainable food systems globally, all stakeholders, including individual consumers, policymakers, manufacturers, and everyone involved in the food supply chain, must work together to achieve the common goal of providing sustainable, healthy diets for all.
The collaborative synergy of all stakeholders is necessary to collect scientific evidence and create a range of guiding policies to enable a Great Food Transformation.
The Commission has analyzed the following 5 strategies that promise successful food transformation: (1). Promote awareness of the benefits of healthy and sustainable diets through education and cooperation between diverse teams in the health and environment sectors; the aim is to shift from consumption of animal source foods to consumption of plant-based foods.
(2). Produce a greater variety of nutritious foods in a biodiversity system instead of producing a high quantity of a few crops that are mostly used as animal feed.
(3). Apply innovative agricultural processes to enhance biodiversity, produce high-quality, nutritious foods, mitigate the use of fertilizer and water, and drastically reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides as well as soil contamination with phosphorous compounds.
(4). Global management of land and oceans through appropriate government policies that stipulate zero-expansion of new agricultural land into natural ecosystems and species-rich forests, and restoring degraded land. The policies should also prevent negative impacts on the ecosystem through fisheries.
(5). The healthy food production process should be optimized through technology to reduce food loss by 50% for the global food system to stay within its safe operating space.
The disastrous results of climate change due to the negative impact of an unhealthy food production system could be prevented or mitigated by shifting to the production and consumption of healthy and sustainable foods. The EAT-Lancet Commission, a team of international researchers, proposes a framework with healthy reference diets and boundaries, which is universally adaptable and capable of feeding 10 billion people with healthy diets by 2050
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