From EurekAlert!
Public Release: 16-Jan-2019
The Lancet: Diet and food production must radically change to improve health and avoid potentially catastrophic damage to the planet
Feeding a growing population of 10 billion people by 2050 with a healthy and sustainable diet will be impossible without transforming eating habits, improving food production, and reducing food waste.
The Lancet
- Feeding a growing population of 10 billion people by 2050 with a healthy and sustainable diet will be impossible without transforming eating habits, improving food production, and reducing food waste. First scientific targets for a healthy diet that places healthy food consumption within the boundaries of our planet will require significant change, but are within reach.
- The daily dietary pattern of a planetary health diet consists of approximately 35% of calories as whole grains and tubers, protein sources mainly from plants – but including approximately 14g of red meat per day – and 500g per day of vegetables and fruits.
- Moving to this new dietary pattern will require global consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar to decrease by about 50%, while consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes must double.
- Unhealthy diets are the leading cause of ill-health worldwide and following the diet could avoid approximately 11 million premature deaths per year.
- A shift towards the planetary health diet would ensure the global food system The diet can exists within planetary boundariess for food production such as those for climate change, biodiversity loss, land and freshwater use, as well as nutrient cycles.
Transformation of the global food system is urgently needed as more than 3 billion people are malnourished (including people who are undernourished and overnourished), and food production is exceeding planetary boundaries – driving climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution due to over-application of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, and unsustainable changes in water and land use.
The findings are from the EAT-Lancet Commission which provides the first scientific targets for a healthy diet from a sustainable food production system that operates within planetary boundaries for food. The report promotes diets consisting of a variety of plant-based foods, with low amounts of animal-based foods, refined grains, highly processed foods, and added sugars, and with unsaturated rather than saturated fats.
Human diets inextricably link health and environmental sustainability, and have the potential to nurture both. However, current diets are pushing the Earth beyond its planetary boundaries, while causing ill health. This puts both people and the planet at risk. Providing healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an immediate challenge as the population continues to grow – projected to reach 10 billion people by 2050 – and get wealthier (with the expectation of higher consumption of animal-based foods).
To meet this challenge, dietary changes must be combined with improved food production and reduced food waste. The authors stress that unprecedented global collaboration and commitment will be needed, alongside immediate changes such as refocussing agriculture to produce varied nutrient-rich crops, and increased governance of land and ocean use.
“The food we eat and how we produce it determines the health of people and the planet, and we are currently getting this seriously wrong,” says one of the commission authors Professor Tim Lang, City, University of London, UK. “We need a significant overhaul, changing the global food system on a scale not seen before in ways appropriate to each country’s circumstances. While this is unchartered policy territory and these problems are not easily fixed, this goal is within reach and there are opportunities to adapt international, local and business policies. The scientific targets we have devised for a healthy, sustainable diet are an important foundation which will underpin and drive this change.” [1]
The Commission is a 3-year project that brings together 37 experts from 16 countries with expertise in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, food systems, economics and political governance.
Scientific targets for a healthy diet – the planetary health diet
Despite increased food production contributing to improved life expectancy and reductions in hunger, infant and child mortality rates, and global poverty over the past 50 years, these benefits are now being offset by global shifts towards unhealthy diets high in calories, sugar, refined starches and animal-based foods and low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, and fish.
The authors argue that the lack of scientific targets for a healthy diet have hindered efforts to transform the food system. Based on the best available evidence, the Commission proposes a dietary pattern that meets nutritional requirements, promotes health, and allows the world to stay within planetary boundaries.
Compared with current diets, global adoption of the new recommendations by 2050 will require global consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar to decrease by more than 50%, while consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes must increase more than two-fold. Global targets will need to be applied locally – for example, countries in North America eat almost 6.5 times the recommended amount of red meat, while countries in South Asia eat only half the recommended amount. All countries are eating more starchy vegetables (potatoes and cassava) than recommended with intakes ranging from between 1.5 times above the recommendation in South Asia and by 7.5 times in sub-Saharan Africa.
“The world’s diets must change dramatically. More than 800 million people have insufficient food, while many more consume an unhealthy diet that contributes to premature death and disease,” says co-lead Commissioner Dr Walter Willett, Harvard University, USA. “To be healthy, diets must have an appropriate calorie intake and consist of a variety of plant-based foods, low amounts of animal-based foods, unsaturated rather than saturated fats, and few refined grains, highly processed foods, and added sugars. The food group intake ranges that we suggest allow flexibility to accommodate various food types, agricultural systems, cultural traditions, and individual dietary preferences – including numerous omnivore, vegetarian, and vegan diets.” [1]
Please view the image to see the dietary targets based on a 2,500 kcal/day diet [2].
The authors estimate that widespread adoption of such a diet would improve intakes of most nutrients – increasing intake of healthy mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids and reducing consumption of unhealthy saturated fats. It would also increase essential micronutrient intake (such as iron, zinc, folate, and vitamin A, as well as calcium in low-income countries), except for vitamin B12 where supplementation or fortification might be necessary in some circumstances.
They also modelled the potential effects of global adoption of the diet on deaths from diet-related diseases. Three models each showed major health benefits, suggesting that adopting the new diet globally could avert between 10.9-11.6 million premature deaths per year – reducing adult deaths by between 19-23.6%.
The authors highlight that evidence about diet, human health, and environmental sustainability is continually evolving and includes uncertainty, so they include ranges in their estimates, but are confident of the overall picture. Professor Lang says: “While major transformations to the food system occurred in China, Brazil, Vietnam, and Finland in the 20th century, and illustrate that diets can change rapidly, humanity has never aimed to change the food system this radically at such speed or scale. People might warn of unintended consequences or argue that the case for action is premature, however, the evidence is sufficient and strong enough to warrant action, and any delay will increase the likelihood of not achieving crucial health and climate goals.” [1]
Food sustainability
Since the mid-1950s, the pace and scale of environmental change has grown exponentially. Food production is the largest source of environmental degradation. To be sustainable, food production must occur within food-related planetary boundaries for climate change, biodiversity loss, land and water use, as well as for nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. However, production must also be sustainably intensified to meet the global population’s growing food demands.
This will require decarbonising agricultural production by eliminating the use of fossil fuels and land use change losses of CO2 in agriculture. In addition, zero loss of biodiversity, net zero expansion of agricultural land into natural ecosystems, and drastic improvements in fertiliser and water use efficiencies are needed.
The authors estimate the minimum, unavoidable emissions of greenhouse gases if we are to provide healthy food for 10 billion people by 2050 [3]. They conclude that non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions of methane and nitrous oxide [4] will remain between 4.7-5.4 gigatonnes in 2050, with current emissions already at an estimated 5.2 gigatonnes in 2010. This suggests that the decarbonisation of the world energy system must progress faster than anticipated, to accommodate the need to healthily feed humans without further damaging the planet.
Phosphorus use must also be reduced (from 17.9 to between 6-16 teragrams), as must biodiversity loss (from 100 to between 1-80 extinctions per million species each year).
Based on their estimates, current levels of nitrogen, land and water use may be within the projected 2050 boundary (from 131.8 teragrams in 2010 to between 65-140 in 2050, from 12.6 M km2 in 2010 vs 11-15 M km2 in 2050, and from 1.8 M km3 in 2010 vs 1-4 M km3, respectively) but will require continued efforts to sustain this level. The boundary estimates are subject to uncertainty, and will require continuous update and refinement.
Using these boundary targets, the authors modelled various scenarios to develop a sustainable food system and deliver healthy diets by 2050. To stay within planetary boundaries, a combination of major dietary change, improved food production through enhanced agriculture and technology changes [5], and reduced food waste during production and at the point of consumption will be needed, and no single measure is enough to stay within all of the limits.
“Designing and operationalising sustainable food systems that can deliver healthy diets for a growing and wealthier world population presents a formidable challenge. Nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution. The good news is that it is not only doable, we have increasing evidence that it can be achieved through sustainable intensification that benefits both farmer, consumer and planet,” says co-lead Commissioner Professor Johan Rockström, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. [1]
“Humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet. Sustainability of the food system must therefore be defined from a planetary perspective. Five key environmental processes regulate the state of the planet. Our definition of sustainable food production requires that we use no additional land, safeguard existing biodiversity, reduce consumptive water use and manage water responsibly, substantially reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, produce zero carbon dioxide emissions, and cause no further increase in methane and nitrous oxide emissions. There is no silver bullet for combatting harmful food production practices, but by defining and quantifying a safe operating space for food systems, diets can be identified that will nurture human health and support environmental sustainability.” Professor Rockström continues.
Transforming the global food system
The Commission proposes five strategies to adjust what people eat and how it is produced.
Firstly, policies to encourage people to choose healthy diets are needed, including improving availability and accessibility to healthy food through improved logistics and storage, increased food security, and policies that promote buying from sustainable sources. Alongside advertising restrictions and education campaigns, affordability is also crucial, and food prices must reflect production and environmental costs. As this may increase costs to consumers, social protection for vulnerable groups may be required to avoid continued poor nutrition in low-income groups.
Strategies to refocus agriculture from producing high volumes of crops to producing varied nutrient-rich crops are needed. Currently, small and medium farms supply more than 50% of the essential nutrients in the global food supply. Global agriculture policies should incentivise producers to grow nutritious, plant-based foods, develop programmes that support diverse production systems, and increase research funding for ways to increase nutrition and sustainability. In some contexts, animal farming is important to nutrition and the ecosystem and the benefits and risks of animal farming should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Sustainably intensifying agriculture will also be key, and must take into account local conditions to help apply appropriate agricultural practices and generate sustainable, high quality crops.
Equally, effective governance of land and ocean use will be important to preserve natural ecosystems and ensure continued food supplies. This could be achieved through protecting intact natural areas on land (potentially through incentives), prohibiting land clearing, restoring degraded land, removing harmful fishing subsidies, and closing at least 10% of marine areas to fishing (including the high seas to create fish banks).
Lastly, food waste must be at least halved. The majority of food waste occurs in low- and middle-income countries during food production due to poor harvest planning, lack of access to markets preventing produce from being sold, and lack of infrastructure to store and process foods. Improved investment in technology and education for farmers is needed. Food waste is also an issue in high-income countries, where it is primarily caused by consumers and can be resolved through campaigns to improve shopping habits, help understand ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ dates, and improve food storage, preparation, portion sizes and use of leftovers.
Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief at The Lancet, says: “Poor nutrition is a key driver and risk factor for disease. However, there has been a global failure to address this. It is everyone’s and no-one’s problem.”
He continues: “The transformation that this Commission calls for is not superficial or simple, and requires a focus on complex systems, incentives, and regulations, with communities and governments at multiple levels having a part to play in redefining how we eat. Our connection with nature holds the answer, and if we can eat in a way that works for our planet as well as our bodies, the natural balance of the planet’s resources will be restored. The very nature that is disappearing holds the key to human and planetary survival.”
The EAT-Lancet Commission is one of several reports on nutrition being published by The Lancet in 2019. The next Commission – The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change – will publish later this month.
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Peer-reviewed / Review, modelling, opinion
NOTES TO EDITORS
This study was funded by the Wellcome Trust and EAT (specifically funding from the Wellcome Trust and Stordalen Foundation). The Stockholm Resilience Centre was the scientific coordinator of the report.
The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdf if you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com
[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.
[2] This takes into account the average global energy intake being around 2,370 kcal/day (with some countries being even higher than this) based on country-specific body weights. The diet corresponds to the average energy needs of a 70-kg man aged 30 years and a 60-kg woman aged 30 years whose level of physical activity is moderate to high. It is designed to meet nutritional requirements of healthy individuals over 2 years old (with energy intake depending on age, body size, and physical activity), but the authors note that there are special considerations for young children, adolescents and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
[3] This is based on the expectation that commitments to decarbonise the energy system by 2050 (no fossil-fuels for tractors, electricity, heat) will be met globally, there will be net-zero CO2 emissions from land-use change (through sustainable land management), and there will be improved nitrogen use efficiency and reduced methane emissions from ruminant livestock.
[4] The study focusses on methane and nitrous oxide and does not include carbon dioxide. This is because food production is a prime source of methane, and nitrous oxide, which have 56 times and 280 times the global warming potential (over 20 years) of carbon dioxide, respectively, and because it is assumed there are no net inputs of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels to agriculture by 2050.
[5] These estimates only include technologies that are currently available and proven at scale.
“food production is exceeding planetary boundaries ”
WHAT!!! We are growing food off planet now?
I am somewhat knowledgeable about space missions, but I am completely unaware of anything of this sort.
The Chinese had some cotton growing on the far side of the moon. Unfortunately, they turned off their heaters during the lunar night and the cotton died.
[The mods cotton to potatoes. .mod]
hahahah saw that yesterday!
Well, the moon is a harsh mistress.
Just what the hell is a “planetary boundary”?
This is just another made up term that has no meaning.
Notice how they included people who eat to much with people who do not get enough food, and called them all “malnourished”?
While this may be a correct usage of the word, grammatically speaking, it is certainly not correct in terms of the common usage idiom, to refer to people who are chronically underfed and are suffering from kwashiorkor or some such ailment.
Reports indicate that as much as one half of the food grown in the US is never eaten, but is instead wasted, spoils, or is thrown away.
But food is also cheap.
If it ever got more expensive due to shortages, we can be sure that such things as wastage and overeating would likely diminish. And people would have incentives to produce more. At some point of price increase, large numbers of people would use back yards and rooftops to grow food, which at this point in the US is almost nonexistent, even more so than a few decades ago. And farmers would increase production as well: There are still lots of places where food production is held down by paying people to not produce, or penalizing them for producing too much.
But in spite of these factoids, their is more food than ever, on an absolute basis and per person in the world. Food is easier to grow than ever, with both yields up and marginal land more able to be cultivated. Like every other alarmist rant about food, it is a nothing but a lame echo of Thomas Malthus, and a rehashing of hundreds of years of failed predictions of impending doom and starvation.
The world is better fed than ever, and people are living longer than ever and staying healthier than ever while they are alive.
And none of these trends in good news (good for people who do not hate people) shows the least sign of slowing down or tailing off…most are accelerating if anything.
Once respected and respectable Lancet is now off the rail on the crazy train of climate alarmism and fearmongering.
Sad.
Food consumption by most Americans leads to bottoms exceeding the boundaries of their britches. That, and the government recommended diet, which is basically the best diet possible for sales by Eli Lilly and other manufacturers of insulin.
I just looked up the word “malnourished”, and it seems that it is just as I suspected…that word is not defined how they use it.
It refers to people who do not have enough to eat, access to a proper diet, or are unable to utilize the food they do consume, and are thus thin and suffering from malnutrition, which itself means one who has inadequate food.
Leftists love to change the meaning of words, and this is what has been done here.
The word simply does not mean what they say it means.
Plus, the number they cite is not to be found in estimates from world health authorities on the number of poorly fed and obese people.
The high end of such estimates come in at about 1.1 billion each, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization puts the number of people who are either chronically underfed or sometimes underfed, at under 815 million in 2016, and that number is lower than in past years and falling.
The number of obese people is all over the map, with little correlation or agreement from one estimate to the next.
Some sources say the US has the most obese people, at 68% of adults overweight or obese, but then pegs the number of obese adults at 78 million.
Most other sources have a far lower number, about 30 to 32% in the US, with other countries higher, like Mexico at 33+% or more. Most sources list Pacific Islanders as the fattest.
No one knows, is the truth, with some estimates far higher than others, with as few as 10% or as many as 1/3 of the world overweight or obese.
The Lancet number are pretty much the high end of the range of estimates, and of course they state it as fact, and conflate malnutrition with obesity and use both to claim we do not have enough food, even while noting that much food is simply wasted.
This whole article is a collection of falsehoods, dubious assertions, facts that are not, and even misleading language and word usage.
IOW…standard warmista jackassery.
Perhaps the U.N. could start by cutting it’s meal expense allowances by 75% for all U.N. officials and UN conferences.
You would think a magazine that once claimed to be the pinnacle of medical science, would know how to look up the meaning of a medical term.
Did I miss the mention of changing the breeding habits of those who cannot feed their own off spring?
Ah. That can’t be mentioned because it’s not whites who are over breeding.
Nobody’s “over breeding”.
The fact that you are concerned that there are too many people of a certain skin color I’ll ignore for the moment.
Could not reply directly to you Mark but please look at the population growth numbers and plot them against GDP. We have exponential growth going on. My late father a doctor often said, “ Homo Sapiens is the only species which breeds in adversity”.
Before you go into ‘race’ questions, I’d like you to read/listen/look Hans Rosling on population growth.
Hans Rosling was an expert on fertility rate, and he did some amazingly good presentations on the topic, freely available.
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies/transcript
Wally is right about the fact that leftists don’t really want to mention that population growth is a not problem of Western countries. Poverty is a thing, but Rosling raises four things.
“Children should survive, children shouldn’t be needed for work, women should get education and join the labor force and family planning should be accessible.”
I have been re-reading living Within Limits by Garrett Hardin. It was published in 1993 and as far as I can tell his observations are still valid.
old white guy
His observations, which of them, are true?
I’m limited to food in here, and fertility rate controlling the need of food production. I see no reason why population growth would not stop if we try, as it has already stopped in the whole Western world, Japan, Russia, China. There are a few places which are still doing badly now; Rosling mentions Guatemala, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Congo. However, I find it difficult for 450 million Europeans (or something) to blame a 60 million people country for overpopulating. And you can’t blame America. You (and we) have already solved that problem from our side.
Overpopulation is a dead horse leftists spank to put a Kiplingishque blame on Western countries, and racists to whip to put blame on the other people out there. In reality, if you “think about the children”, you need to make them first. Hating children (whatever color) doesn’t make the world any better.
owg, never said you hate children, mind you.
Jon
“ Homo Sapiens is the only species which breeds in adversity”
It is a comforting pastime when you are “up to your ass in alligators”.
Jon, we haven’t had exponential growth in population in well over 100 years.
At present the rate of increase is dropping fast. Population will peak in just a few more decades and then start falling rapidly.
PS: All animals breed in adversity. If they didn’t there wouldn’t be any animals.
Soylent green is people.
Memo to all those concerned about food and the planet: the earth is a finite piece of dirt. When there are too many of us and we exceed the carrying capacity of the planet nature will fix the problem.
We could easily triple the amount of food we grow. By working at it a bit we could get even more food.
We are so far from exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet it’s not a topic even worth considering.
Eventually it will happen discussions or not.
Yes – but medical and agricultural researchers continually cancel out the effects of three of the “Four Horsemen”.
What is is with the Greens that they feel the need to force the global population into veganism by slealth ?. It’s as if they want to remove every last joy available to humans.
“slealth”
I like this ‘word’! Looks like a combo between sleeve and stealth, which is highly appropriate in the circumstances.
Leftism is a disease, a horrible life sucking disease.
Ultra poor advice even for vegans. Nutritional science has reverted back to the most stupid advice ever…even our ancestors would vomit in disgust if fermented foods were not available. Because they store better when there is no electric space saving fridges and because fermentation of foods magnifies nutritional content vastly.
In the past, a periodic or even permanent vegan diet was made possible by employing microbes to do all the hard digestive work for us…No mention of fermented foods like fermented cabbage, Kefir, and in particular Natto, thought to be responsible for Japanese longevity and the highest in vitamin K2. In fact, nearly all cultures have employed Bacillus Subtilis to perform the task of creating fermented beans/bean paste similar to Natto as an example of just one of the bacteria responsible for super nutrition used by our highly advanced ancestors. Our civilization is now a primitive culture in comparison.
Unfortunately, the fridge resulted in a shift so that fermented foods were used less…..and to add insult to injury, the “space saving fridge” was invented that uses very thin insulation or removal of as much as possible to make the inside of the fridge as roomy and inefficient to run as is possible.
Getting back to vitamin K2 and the amazingness of nutrition available from pre-digested foods using microbes is the only way vegans can get a complete nutritional profile, in particular, the vitamin K2 only found in meat, and fermented food products, Natto being the highest in K2, and higher than meat.
Honestly, we are living in the nutritional dark ages, and take into account that 90% of our bodies cells are bacterial and need to also be maintained with a diet high in probiotics and foods that maintain the good bacteria. For example, seratonin is made by bacteria in the gut to a large degree.
Humans are 90% bacteria and this needs to be taken into account when finding expert information or risk falling into the bottomless cesspool of information, mostly extremely flawed information not containing data on the human microbiome and how to address its needs.
In other words, 97% of food science is flawed due to the ignorance of the microbiome and its needs.
Some info to help get started into understanding the nutritional needs of our bacteria.
Enjoy
“Fermented Foods vs. Probiotic Supplements”
I think the assertion that 9 out of 10 cells in our body are bacteria was from a poorly conducted estimate from a 1977 study, and was based on not much evidence, and then just ran with.
The estimate was that we harbor 100 trillion bacterial cells and are composed of 10 trillion human cells, the majority of which are red blood cells.
But more recent studies have indicated closer to 25 trillion human cells, and a roughly similar number of bacteria particles, with considerable uncertainty of plus or minus 25 percent or so, and individual variations of over 50% from a 70 kg male.
But these studies also have the honesty to admit they are based largely on guesswork, that no one knows for sure.
In any case, how is that number or ration germane to questions of what constitutes a healthy diet?
I have made a point of paying attention to what people who have lived very long lives have to say about why they have lived so long, and most of them have not much idea, except to say such things as they eat what they want to eat, and have avoided getting sick (Wow! Whodathunkit?), although just how one does that last part is the actual mystery.
I have known plenty of people who were very slim and trim and never worked out and ate all sorts of crap, and others that seemed to go to lengths to have healthy diets and exercise regular, only to drop dead or get some awful illness.
People that are in their 90s today were born long before we had much if any idea of vitamins, food chemistry, nutritional content, etc. Or much in the way of actual useful medicines and vaccines.
IMO, there is no secret to health and long life: It half luck, half genes, half where you live, and the rest is just paying attention to taking care of yourself.
Sorry, that should say recent estimates are that we have 35 trillion human cells in our body.
It’s ok….forget i ever said anything about it..
Looks like here in Australia expressing skepticism about vaccines in public etc is now punishable by up to 10 years in jail.. I can see momentum similar to Galilean Flat Earth times so that climate change and disagreeing with Lancet articles and skepticism of them will also soon also be punishable by jail.
Will not be able to comment here any more so please excuse my absence.
Thanks to all for understanding.
Are you serious?
Anti-vaxxers piss me off, but jail for them?
That is going a bit far.
I think all it would take is disallowing people who have not been vaccinated from attending schools or working in some companies that agreed to such.
Ironically, it is the success of modern medicine and vaccination programs that have led us to a time where people could even have the notion of vaccines being bad, because every once in a while someone has a bad reaction.
The diseases they used to kill and disable millions are not even a memory, and people think this is a normal condition, while they exploit the herd immunity of those who have more sense
At a certain critical level, herd immunity fails, and they endanger everyone.
@Mike from au
The 10 year penalty only applies to doctors, registered nurses & midwives any layman can express any view they like, your post seems to be deliberately deceiptive. Those in that covered group who really want to express anti-vax stance simply need to give up their registration. The registration is a contract with the Federal Government which covers a standard to allow you to practice and if you break that standard you face penalties.
The background to this is Doctors and Nurses have always had more freedom in Australia than even a dentist who was not allowed to identify themselves in any sort of advertising or promotion … ever seen adds with the line “this man is a dentist so we can’t show you his face on television”?
The law simply brings Doctors and Nurses into line with many others professions which have Federal registration agreements which covers a multitude of professions from Electricians, Builders, Explosive Shotfirers, PyroTechnicians, Motor Vechicle Traders, Mine Managers, Accountants, Auditors, Gas Installers and it goes on and on.
The most recent estimates of the propotionality of bacteria and our own human cells was from the recent human genome project and a result of it.
I do my own fermented foods and now find them indispensable. The difference is clear in my 50’s and has reversed most all of my health problems beyond recognition. Clearly, i am a reformed microbiome and this has had the effect, after searching for decades, of allowing me to demonstrate for myself that there is a secret, and it, this secret, most closely resembles what we did before refrigeration was invented. That’s just what i was able to verify empirically by experiments on my own body lol.
The fact is that microbes assist us by pre-digesting many of our foods, and are key in the production chemical factory of producing seratonin as just one example. BUilding enzymes from scratch by our own cells only has allways been too much like hard work.
All complex organisms rely on microbes to do the hard work that i know of. If you know of one that is sterile and does not use microbes please let me know. For example cows also rely on microbes to do the heavy lifting.
My p[oint is that our primitive medical science in general does not address this, other than noticing that antibiotics can result in bacterial inbalance that can be adressed by taking yogurt. Even that info is scant and so poor, that most people do not know that yogurt bacteria does not even make it past the stomach due to the Ph that kills most all of the lacto bacillus in the yogurt. It is the enzymes created by the bacillus in the yogurt that help ‘feed’ the existing bacteria in the gut so that the growth of bad bacteria is curtailed.
The microbiologist in the video adresses this popular misconception also. Not that youtube university is the only place that information can be verified in my example video kickstarter..
My point was that the actual numbers and the ration are not important to know, and no one knows the correct values anyway, and it is very likely that there is huge variations from one person to another.
Bacteria are very small. Volume wise, most of our body is human stuff.
It is known that the majority of cells in our body are red blood cells, but does knowing this, or knowing what the actual number is, help anyone decide what to eat or what constitutes healthy lifestyle?
I am not disagreeing with your main point, although I do not think I can stomach much in the way of fermented anything.
Some cheese is fine, but most kinds would make me vomit to even sniff them directly.
Ditto with such foods as sour cream and whatever that other stuff you mention is.
It is good that we do not all like the same stuff (that way, less goes to waste), and I am pretty sure that, similarly, we are not all equally adapted to eating the same stuff. Our nose told us what to eat for millions of years, and still informs the choices of virtually every living thing on Earth…I think that what smells good is evolution’s way of speaking to your brain, just like what you find attractive in a mate is evolution telling your brain who a desirable partner is.
One part of this article I have not commented on yet is where they state that poor choices and unhealthy diets contribute x number of premature deaths, or some such assertion. But that does not reconcile with the simple fact that more people than ever are living longer than ever, and doing so while remaining fit and active and healthier or longer than in years past. I live in a place where large numbers of people come to retire, and I can tell you that there are a lot of people of very advanced years that are doing just fine, and I do not think they are all obsessing about food and exercise or anything…they live their lives as they always have, for the most part.
As for your observation about yogurt…I have an anecdote from personal experience that bears on that. When I moved to this part of the world about 20 years ago (moved back really), I took a series of part time jobs while I was locating something I was well qualified for that I would also enjoy, just to stay busy.
One was working at a supermarket (they are always hiring, on the spot) and I was given the role of dairy manager…which is retail lingo for stocking the shelves in the milk aisle.
One of the items that took up a lot of space was yogurts…in several brands and a welter of flavors and styles. And I noticed some things…along which was that people that shopped for yogurt were notably healthy people…I mean they just LOOKED healthy and fit and radiating life energy. It was not even close…they were healthy people eating that yogurt. I do not like yogurt, but I found I could eat it if I put a container of it in my morning protein shake with skim milk and fruit. I do believe it made a difference.
This is interesting reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Microbiome_Project
(It is not fire that was the big breakthrough for man eons ago….it was fermented foods and getting bacteria to do all the work of pre-digestion and to increase the nutritional content beyond the original measure…Cows employ similar means lol or they would not be able to digest grass without this massive microbial help..and as food preservation means if i may be so bold ) My opinion at this time, in my present heightened state of microbe awareness lol
You are right that it is not proportion or numbers, it is the formation of the relationship and aspects theroff.
(Serotonin or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT))
For example,
“Indigenous bacteria from the gut microbiota regulate host serotonin biosynthesis ”
Jessica M. Yano,1 Kristie Yu,1 Gregory P. Donaldson,1 Gauri G. Shastri,1 Phoebe Ann,1 Liang Ma,2 Cathryn R. Nagler,3 Rustem F. Ismagilov,2 Sarkis K. Mazmanian,1 and Elaine Y. Hsiao1,*
From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4393509/
“Mammals are colonized by a vast and diverse collection of microbes that critically influences health and disease. Recent studies highlight a role for the microbiota in regulating blood 5-HT levels, wherein serum concentrations of 5-HT are substantially reduced in mice reared in the absence of microbial colonization (germ-free, GF), compared to conventionally-colonized (specific pathogen-free, SPF) controls (Sjogren et al., 2012; Wikoff et al., 2009). In addition, intestinal ECs are morphologically larger in GF vs. SPF rats (Uribe et al., 1994), which suggests that microbes could impact the development and/or function of 5-HT-producing cells. Interestingly, some species of bacteria grown in culture can produce 5-HT (Tsavkelova et al., 2006), raising the question of whether indigenous members of the microbiota contribute to host 5-HT levels through de novo synthesis.
So the biological symetry even here alone is miraculous in nature. Stunning
After looking it up to confirm my memory, I see I got the number wrong again:
” In 2014, the American Academy of Microbiology published a FAQ that emphasized that the number of microbial cells and the number of human cells are both estimates, and noted that recent research had arrived at a new estimate of the number of human cells – approximately 37.2 trillion”
“IMO, there is no secret to health and long life…”
Terry Pratchet had the secret: Don’t die.
My last sentence there was an attempt at a Yogi Berra-ism.
K2 is an assortment of menaquinones: assembked such that there are variable numbers of isoprenoids groups at end of a ring molecule (a naphto-quinone quinine). They are different from K1 which is the core complex of a plant leaf electron acceptor site of the “photo-system one” involved in photosynthesis; animals eating leaves ingest K1.
Nato is the K2 menaquinone 7; depending on type of natto it has been test to have 796-998 micro-grams of menaquinone / 100 gr. Blue cheese tested had 22 micro-grams /100 gr., the closest other source is soft cheeses from France, which measured from 2 to 10 micro-grams/100 gr. Animal liver also has some: pork liver tested had 2 micro-grams/100 gr., Japan beef liver tested had 18 micro-grams /100 gr. & unexplicably Finland beef liver tested reported only 3 micro-gram menaquinone 7 K2/100 gr.
Buckwheat honey recently spectrally analized has K2 menaquinone varieties 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7. It is proposed bee gut microbes produce it & my supposition is other very dark honey could also have menaquinone K2s . If interested in findings see free full text available on-line :
“Identification of menaquinones (Vitamin K2 homologues) as novel constituents of honey.”
I’ll add that Bacillus subtilis is a large family of soil microbes & the B. subtilis, var. natto is what used to make natto. It seems possible that before fire domestication (& even some recent plant gatherers) our human ancestors ingested strains of B. subtilis with their residual dirt. Which is to infer (? I can only speculate) this provided them with enough K2 to ameliorate any impact if they lacked animal dietary sources.
The Koreans make their own version of bacillus subtilis natto using a wild fermentation method with the use of temperatures of between 43-50 Celsius to favour the growing conditions that Subtilis like.
The Japanese natto is made with selected strains of Subtilis by their own panel of experts on the required taste etc.
In the video, the author uses a wild fermentation method on an electric blanket next to a sunny window of her apartment. The Subtilis is inoculated into the beans by merely being placed on top of some dried wheat straw that is presumably covered in the wild Subtilis.
I love it and am organising a more elaborate temperature controlled environment to make my own natto/Cheonggukjang/청국장. It’s a whole new approach to understanding health in my view. And it feels like i was made for the flavours…my taste receptors are tingling now and i drool easily just thinking about fermented flavours of sauerkraut, miso, natto, and the other fermented foods.
“Cheonggukjang (Extra-strong fermented soybean paste) 청국장”
Ten years ago I made ice cream (fresh whole milk I pasteurized) commercially in the tropics. To keep it from melting too fast I extracted the poly-glutamic acid from fresh natto’s stringy surface secretion & incorporated a measured bit of the extract toward the end of churning the ice cream mixture.
I made natto from a calculated amount of Japanese spores innoculating soy beans in an incubator for a set time & temperature. It allowed me to standardize the product & conduct experiments to determine a suitable amount for incorporation of poly-glutamic acid extract (not the fermented bean granules) into the ice cream formula(s) I developed.
It is also badly flawed from complete ignorance of agricultural practicalities.
I really don’t think they even believe in veganism, rather they are stealthily advocating total starvation to eradicate the human species
Not sure where you get that idea from. They show that a diet of 2500 kcal per day
is feasible for everyone even if the world’s population increases to 10 billion. And this
can be done without any increase in farmland and a significant reduction in pollution from nitrogen run-off. And given that 2300 kcal per day is about what an active male adult needs to survive this diet would result in all 10 billion people on earth gaining weight.
The whole “no fossil fuels” for production thing is a dead giveaway. Have fun pulling the thresher, Percy. I’ll be in back with the whip.
I love people like the article authors and Percy Jackson who make the crazy assumption that somehow the entire world will work in such a nice organized way … note to socialist and lefties the world is not a nice place 🙂
The fact is food production will increase to meet world demand because it is driven by simple economics. The only thing that limits food production is market and cost and as either of those goes up so will production. Given that roughly 30-50% of food is currently wasted we could easily feed twice the population with what we currently produce and the reality is .
Hard science and engineering studies have looked at feeding 100 Billion people and it is easily doable with current technology. It simply comes down to area of production needed to produce food enough per person and with more and more Controlled-environment agriculture production it gets easier and easier.
Has anyone considered how much CO2 is exhaled by 10 billion people?
Be warned. The vegan terrorists are coming. What the anti meat bunch (another new religion) ignores is that the dry West is ideally suited for cattle that have largely replaced bison. This land requires undulates for its environmental health. The land is absolutely unsuitable for nuts and berries and the other water intensive replacements they wish to force upon us and which the aquifers cannot sustain. By and large, most of the farm land in the US is competitively doing what it does best.
The article presents no data. It is nothing but a rant of the same old “sky is falling” one-liners. It advocates for world wide governance of agriculture and food distribution. We should all be standing in a food line for our daily rations. Does anyone remember the Soviet 5 year plans and total government control of production and its food lines, starvation?
A rant indeed and like most rants, absolute drivel.
Ah but!
“…adopting the new diet globally could avert between 10.9-11.6 million premature deaths per year – reducing adult deaths by between 19-23.6%.”
which would seem to exacerbate the population problem
Well, not really. See the Hans Rosling video link I posted above.
In order to reduce fertility rate (and later population growth) “[c]hildren should survive, children shouldn’t be needed for work, women should get education and join the labor force and family planning should be accessible.”
Population growth that comes from people living better life and not miserable and then dying, is not a minus you know.
When do we get the ration cards? or the eRations?
I’m starving. Think I’ll grill myself a nice big thick juicy ribeye, just dripping with blood!
Ehhh forget the grill, just show it a picture of a match.
The red juice dripping from meat isn’t blood. But yeah, I like steak like that. Shame the rest of my family like it burnt to a crisp!
True, blood is drained from a carcass before processing.
It is myoglobin, often with water diluting it.
Rare, that a good Vet could bring it back. 😉
Malthusian doomsday tripe.
Pontificating over tomorrow’s potential problems with yesterday’s solutions.
You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to know that IS a bad idea.
“Vegans ‘take twice as many sick days’ as meat eating colleagues, report says”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6585789/Vegans-twice-sick-days-meat-eating-colleagues-report-says.html
Another way to destroy the western economies ?
D’OH !
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, my brother rented at apartment on South street in Philly, and he lived above a “macrobiotic health center”.
This was a place where vegans not only exchanged information and took classes and such, but would gather for meals every evening (maybe other meals too, IDK).
And there was one thing notable about all of these people who lived a life committed to veganism, consuming a “macrobiotic” diet, etc: Far from being a picture of health and rubustitude, they were the largest collection of wan, sickly looking, skinny to the point of frailty, and in general unhealthy and troubled looking souls I have ever witnessed. I had the distinct impression that death row at a prison would likely be a more cheery crowd.
So, Marcus, that is my long winded way of saying: Yup! Uh huh!
Once again proof that it’s all about control with these people.
This is pure Thomas R Malthus conjecture brought up to date from 1800 – and still just as wrong. There is currently no shortage of food; there is a failure to distribute the food resulting in areas with surplus and fallow fields and areas of starvation.
The writers for the Lancet should stay within their area of expertise.
I’m not sure they actually have an area of expertise.
Oh so true!
Where I live the only crop that grows successfully is grass. It’s all sheep and cattle. Without these animals, farming would die out, the land would become scrub and communities would die. As it is, the traditional small fields, hedges, trees, small areas of woodland and farms, hamlets and villages make a marvelous landscape which is good for wildlife and for people. Also I love my meat.
It is possible to live without animal products but I doubt it is worth it.
What you describe is typical of vast areas of the earth and without grazing animals would produce no food edible to humans or at least not enough to sustain life.
The stunning stupidity of advocating policy to limit what is eaten can lead to a myriad of deadly unintended consequences.
I will draw the line at cannibalism, however, unless you are really hungry and your meal isn’t fed meat.
“Current diets are pushing the Earth beyond its planetary boundaries …”
Do these people read what they have written? Just one gem among many.
Yes, I noticed those gems also, see my first remark.
The sentence doesn’t make any sense even in context. How can Earth go beyond its boundaries?
It’s right up there with “The Edge of Space”. If its infinite, it has no edges. We are already in “space”… on a planet. If you are on a ship at sea, …you are still at sea.
Nope they don’t read, and the funny part is the world could feed 10Billion people right now without a single change. If you want a simple answer ask any commercial farmer what percentage of their crop doesn’t get sold and why? Then ask them if there was a market for the sub standard food would they sell it?
“[4] The study focusses on methane and nitrous oxide and does not include carbon dioxide.”
“focusses” ?
British English spelling
Nope…nowhere.
Try here:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/focusses
English in other words.
The Lancet assumes too much about what constitutes a “healthy diet”. While Ancel Keys has a strong following, treating his theories as holy writ is unjustified.
Then adding in vegan influences, “organic” food lobbyists, anti-corporate farming activists, and one gets an incoherent plonking lecture.
14 grams of meat per day is an insult, not a diet. My target is 4 oz. per day, and more if I can swing it.
Since I can remember the government recommended diet intake requirements have continually changed. The goal posts seem to change with each new intake requirement study (fad). Then someone gets the bright idea to follow up on the study and they find the recommended requirements have no basis and were the results of someones bias. So we move onto the next diet craze until, it to, is found to be want.
I’ve always figured I’d worry about changing my diet when the advise from the Nutritional Experts manged to remain the same for over a decade. As it is every time I check it seems that half the things that were bad for you are now good and vice versa.
Personally I rate Nutritional Science right up there with Climate Science and Psychology. And, gee wow, they all keep having these crossover studies with each other, despite each being a completely unrelated field.
~¿~
(A reformed, fermented food evangelist)
The diet craze prior to refrigerators was fermented foods, to preserve them and to increase the nutritional content of grains and milk in particular.
It lasted tens of thousands of years.
Ah! Cheese! As a child in the 1940’s, with a lactose intolerance (not understood in those times) which caused me to throw up if I drank milk, I had a lot of health problems. But did I LOVE cheese! But the rationing of the time resulted in the weekly cheese ration for an adult being rather less that I would put on a single sandwich today. So, I have to agree that fermentation was, in my case, good for me. I wonder about the Chinese, who, I have read, regard cheese as so much ‘rotten milk’. Maybe fermented Soy makes up for that?
Check out this helpful and hilarious video from Christopher Snowdon on how to cook your breakfast within these health guidelines
https://twitter.com/iealondon/status/1085786294947479552
I’ll let you steal a French fry, but keep your hands off of my bacon double cheeseburger.
so they are saying 1st world countries have to eat like 3rd world….
better tell the 3rd world countries then….
14 grams of meat a day?
That is half an ounce.
Just for that, I am eating TWO steaks tonight!
B@st@rds!
Stay out of my kitchen!
I rolled my eyes at that one, too. 14 grams would basically be meat flavoring (for your grilled slab of tofu).
++’s
LOL
“If so-called “experts” want to understand why the public so often fail to take them seriously, their answer is right here…”
So says Guido Fawkes:
https://order-order.com/2019/01/17/mad-academics-call-whole-world-eat-1-10th-sausage-per-day/
Sheer idiocy cloaked in “for the good of all and mother Gaia”. Nothing new but more tripe about how to control the populace and resume serfdom under the appointed guardians of the world – the self same hypocricy laden crowd preaching to us non-stop.
Conspicuously absent from the recommendations:
1-use more genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food production
2-reduce inefficient organic farming
Agree genetic modification will make food productivity greater. Personally am not an adherent of organic farming (nor select organic food to eat), but would not instigate it’s practitioners change (reduce) their practises.
Maybe Lancet authors should recommend less developed countries build packing houses to reduce spoilage of harvests due to lack of temperature control post harvest.
The idiocy of the LEFTIST knows no bounds. I detest all of them and their ilk.
I didn’t see pizza on the chart.
I know, right?
The most popular and consumed food in the US, and some other places I would hazard a guess, and they clean forgot to allocate any of it at all!
14 g of Pepperoni, I think, is allotted to your pizza.
Sliced by Kramer…so thin you cannot even be sure it is there.
But, it is all surface area!
https://youtu.be/9AbP77BE0BY
There was a chart ?
Wonder where polish sausage and pierogis fits ?
Sure, right there in the article.
Food waste is the big problem, about 1/3 of food produced goes UNSOLD and is thrown out.
The real problem is over population. We have too many people as it is. We should be gradually reducing our human population, not increasing it.
The reality is that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. It is not a matter of saving the planet. Climate change will continue whether mankind is here or not.
We are no where close to being over populated. The world could easily handle twice the number of humans.
According to all models, human population will peak in the next 3 to 5 decades and then start to fall rapidly. No need to get your panties in a twist.
+1 to MarkW
I pretty much shut down when I saw the word “global”.
1) our health is a wreck because of our high stress life style. Early starts to the work day, late nights, over time, 30 min lunches and the fact that if you don’t conform to this high stress arrangement, you won’t eat …. these are the problems.
2) the human being evolved consuming a paleo diet, no whole grains and all that crap. Mostly fruit, nuts and meat. … with a little veggie material when the others were is n
Short supply.
3) …. noticed no mention of chicken or fish. What a bunch of idiots.
Except fruit and vegetables as we know it didn’t exist back when we were evolving and those that did were available only for a small period of time and in short supply during the season. Over the centuries fruit and vegetables have been selectively bred to bigger and sweeter, you wouldn’t even recognize the forebears of most produce if you saw it in a store today and you definitely wouldn’t want to eat it.
If we keep on supplying food to those parts of the world who do not believe in birth control then yes we have a potential problem. Of course the 4 horseman my well solve that particular problem.
But there are two solutions if we do run out of food, produce it via factories, probably from the likes of oil or coal, lots s of goodies in those substances, and or to supplement that with Solient Green.
I hope that when the present madness over CO2 is over and we supply energy to the poorer parts of the world , then the population will stabalise as it has done in the Western countries.
MJE
It really amazes me how misconceptions people want to use government to control how many kids other people have.
1) We aren’t supplying food. For the most part we are selling it and they are buying it? Are you proposing food boycotts of any area that doesn’t live life as you want them to?
2) Birth control has never dropped birth rates. People aren’t as stupid as you want to believe they are.
3) What reduces birth rates is wealth and education, something you want to withhold from those who don’t behave as you want.
a bit pedantic re 1): we are ‘supplying’ food regardless of whether we are asking for goods in exchange or offering it gratis.
re 3):
What has been shown to have a reduction in family sizes, and hence birth rates is a higher income and a reliable national pension system.
Interestingly this effect is the exact opposite to what John Malthus predicted.
Exactly Mark.
Highest correlate to birth rate is the inverse relationship between educational attainment of woman and the number of children they have.
Hey…you think this may be why so many countries have banned woman from even leaving the house, let alone getting an proper education?
Lancet is increasingly useless these days. Even for purely medical purposes.
I think you mean “especially” for medical purposes.
Over the last 150 years, millions of acres of crop land were allowed to go fallow in the US, first in the east as more productive farms in the mid-west were opened up, secondly as agricultural practices and better seeds drastically increased the productivity of existing farms.
1) If needed, all these acres in the US, as well as the rest of the developed world, can be brought back into production.
2) Bringing agriculture in the rest of the world up to 1st world productivity standards would create a huge increase in total agricultural production.
3) Currently lots of food is being wasted by organic farmers. Both in their failure to protect their crops from weeds and pests and their failure to use the latest farming technologies.
4) Finally, there are 10’s of millions of backyards in the US alone that could sprout new “Victory Gardens”. Could those gardens feed a family? Of course not, they aren’t designed to. However, if things got dire enough, they would represent 100’s of thousand of new acres under production.
Plus many Mark.
Yards, rooftops, marginal lands, empty lots in cities, fruit trees and bushes in place of those which are purely ornamental, roadway medians and shoulders…
And then there is, as you say, marginal lands and even prime farmland that has been taken out of production for one reason or another…commonly places that reach a certain number of people place bans on organized agriculture: No chickens, pigs, cows, etc.
Look out of an airplane and show me the places that have reached “planetary boundaries” of crowding or land usage. No one can, because in the vast majority of places, there are none…there is plenty of room and people are widely spaced and lots of land is unproductive and unused, or kept in a state of manicured disuse at considerable expense of money and effort, for safety and/or aesthetic reasons.
As if those places were not enough, there are increasing areas of land becoming suitable due to CO2 fertilization. If the world does warm, lots of lands will become more productive, not less so. Deserts will likely shrink, contrary to alarmist BS about all change being bad.
The world could likely feed twice as many as it does simply by eliminating most waste and overeating, even without any changes in productivity or effort to increase such
Absolutely.
The look-out-of-an-aircraft-window-on-a-long-flight test is always enough to convince me that the US part of the world is still quite empty. More than once have I fallen asleep over “fly-over country” and woken up again, surprised to find that nothing seemed to have changed underneath. Lots of land, but few people.
And going trans-Atlantic from the West Coast to London, those vast expanses of Canada with light snow on the ground boggle the mind. A little bit of global warming and some extra CO2 could work wonders for agriculture in those places.
Hey Lancet : Eat ( cottonseed ) cake !
What? Not Soylent on that list?
Also didn’t the Lancet publish a while back an article on the new weapons those evil Israelis were using that made claims they had developed a new weapon that completely vapourised the victims. If I remember correctly the statement was they hadn’t seen the weapon, but it must exist because there were missing people in the combat zone.
Not completely sure the Lancet is as high end science as it thinks it is.
Heh, reminds me of a cute quip,
“I went to the air and space museum, but there was nothing there.”
Horton, editor of The Lancet, is a high-priest of Globalism and state control. Because central planning by those who know best ALWAYS WORKS.
This is a clarion call for ramping up the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in order to promote farm yields. Way to go!
Eat more beans. Produce more bean farts. Warm the world up.
We must all be assimilated.
This central theme of compliance from these idiots is irritating. I for one will not bow to the King.
Articles like this from the The Lancet, “Diet and food production must radically change to improve health and avoid potentially catastrophic damage to the planet” are enough in themselves to make me want to go right out and order a Big Mac with extra sauce and fries, something which I ordinarily never do.
I value this article because I will now do the opposite of what they say. Of course, I all ready do many things they forbid, such as frying my daily chicken egg in butter. Go figure!
Considering some of the other crap they’ve come up with, Lancet can FOAD.
Better yet – ESAD
I know I’ve heard that word –“catastrophic” — somewhere before.
It’s no surprise to me that he two worst disciplines of science (nutrition and climastrology) got together and birthed an idea this stupid. Sure, let’s combine the unhealthiness of a plant-based diet with the alarmism of climastrology… you just know they’ll want to make this mandatory for all.
Truly impressive — totally off-planet nutty!
There is not even an easy starting point to the process of critiquing this plan….I’m not even sure that it could be accomplished for a small autocratic nation of a million or so people.
Is there a psychologist or psychiatrist reading here? Can one of you explain how 37 acknowledged intelligent experts in human nutrition and human affairs could write such a series of recommendations?
The red meat allowance ( 1 ounce) is equal to about 1/2 of a small McDonald’s hamburger patty (or equivalent) per day.
Breakfast would be hit hard > One slice of bacon per day. 1 1/2 eggs per week. ZERO butter.
Unless the entire world population is put under guard by a permanent draconian diet police transition to the recommended diet will never — could never — happen.
What a joke – they pretend to know what is scientifically healthy eating habits. Individual food requirements vary enormously from person to person and since when are saturated fats unhealthy – that was an old
urban myth. Every year millions try to lose weight without much success, despite their best efforts, and these morons think they can prescribe food to the world’s population? People are freedom loving souls, especially when it comes to what they eat. Try to force feed the population and you will get a boot up your ass.
It is what is not in your diet which is often more harmful than what is.
You can last quite a while with too much food but without food not so much.
The absence of certain vitamins and proteins can make life rather uncomfortable.
Need I mention that meat can provide nearly all of these.
Where does the anti birth control person think the ” Caravans” “to the USA, or the so called “Refugees ” ” invading Europe actually come from.
Because a old book says “Be fruitful and multiply ” does not mean that we living in the 21 st. century have to still accept it as the truth.
MJE
Nice strawman you got there. Did your mommy help you build it?
Where did I say I was anti-birth control? I just pointed out that birth control has never done what you claim it should be able to do.
Are you capable of understanding the difference?
And to compound your first straw man, you then leap whole heartedly onto a second.
You take it as a given that had “birth control” been available (it is) that there wouldn’t be hordes of poor people trying to immigrate. Since you have yet to prove that birth control works to control the size of populations, your circular thinking has gotten you so dizzy that you don’t even know what you are saying.
Now finally, to top of your tour of stupidity, you make the assumption that I take my positions based on the bible, not because I have researched the subject and know what I am talking about.
Care to embarrass yourself some more?
“The Commission is a 3-year project that brings together 37 experts from 16 countries with expertise in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, food systems, economics and political governance.”
__________________________________________________
Another consensus science paper where everyone can transport his wish full thinking –
requesting from the public what the authors never will hold on.
__________________________________________________
And again a long letter aka thrash bin with claims long since been refuted.
Anything connected with the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Johan Rockström is certain to 100 % pure unadulterated nonsense.
The last diet message I received was Australia’s very own CSIRO – red wine and cocoa heavy black chocolate are all the go, they said! Still on it all these years later.
All you have to do to understand the progressive mindset is to simply add ‘Nazi’ to the end of it.
Food-Nazi.
Safety-Nazi.
Climate-Nazi.
Eco-Nazi.
Pick your issue.
That pretty well covers it.
For someone my height and gender, 5’10” male, the official numbers for me not to be overweight are between 137 pounds and 173 pounds.
I have broad shoulders, barrel chest, and am very muscular from a youth spent playing sports and bike riding, and I know for sure that if I was at 173 pounds, I would be skinny as a rail, have zero body fat, and would have to lose muscle mass.
So even what they use to define their terms is into the land of wishful thinking and shear ignorance of the range of healthy body proportions.
There are skinny people who are in terrible condition and health, and stocky and even plump people who can run triathlons and are perfectly fit and healthy.
137 pounds for a 5 foot ten inch man is in their range of desirable weight. I weighed over 20 pounds more than that after 3 weeks of not eating any food while recovering from a car accident.
I am a bit taller than you, and 173 pounds. I have to wear the smallest adult size jeans (30in waist) with a belt. I’ve been a bit ill, and usually weight closer to 185, which is still rather skinny.
I still have a few pairs of old Levi’s jeans from when I weighed 175-180 in college, but years of working a plant nursery and lifting weights added a lot of bulk to my upper body.
My legs and lower body have been bulky since I was a teen from years riding a bike every day, sometimes all day as such things as a bike messenger. And I used to race. I also competed as a swimmer for a bunch of years.
I think 180 would be doable for me, so I keep those jeans and other clothes around.
173 would put me under my weight as a high school sophomore.
Who would guess it but people with BMI’s of 25 to 30 had better life expectancies than people with BMI’s less than 25 or more than 30!
This is a jole, right ? The izarre thing is that a peer reviewed medical journal like the Lancet would stoop to publish such nonsense.
But it’s behind a paywall. So the sensible thing to do is not pay anything to the Lancet.
send the publishers a message.
Research has demonstrated that research is 70% non reproducible.
I wonder if this research is reproducible.
I also wonder if the research into the research is reproducible.
Most nutritional studies are epidemiological nonsense. These guys still haven’t figured out that correlation does not imply causation or tiny relative risks should be ignored.
My favorite example is when someone did a survey and found that people who drink artificially sweetened beverages weigh more than people who do not.
From this, they concluded that these sweeteners somehow trick the brain, and cause people who use them to eat more food to compensate.
It seems to have never occurred to them that people who drink Diet Coke probably do so because they know they are too heavy and do not want to drink a ton of sugar (for me the dental health implications are reason enough to avoid sugary drinks).
They assumed that the diet cola and such MADE the people weigh more, rather than the other way around.
think about it for a second
your body senses “sweet” and produces insuin to process sugars
you drink fake sugars nd the insulins is produced but has nothing to work on
hence issues with weightgain as the body tends to then stash it as fat
if you dont like sugar then learn to do without the sweet tastes altogether
rather than go for chem muck.
the fattest people i see are usually the ones carting 24pack fake sweetened drinks home
the best use for sugarless drinks i found was being able to use it to clean up “accidents” when out as its available and cheaper than water;-( and can be used to clean up dogmesses and other yuk events when i travel, lemonade best no colouring
The body doesn’t “sense” sweetness. Insulin is generated when blood sugars increase. Artificial sweeteners don’t increase blood sugars.
What mark says!
Insulin responds to chemical signals regarding blood sugar, and is tightly regulated by several feedback mechanisms.
Conscious perceptions of sweetness do not release insulin.
Think about it…if it were the case, how is the body going to know if you just licked a lollipop or if you just scarfed a huge milk shake?
Fat person, or person in the process of becoming fat, walks into McDonald’s, orders two big Macs and large fries, and then sez “Supersize that please…and a Diet Coke”.
Now, which part of what they ordered is the problem?
I think 70% is optimistic when applied to medical studies. Come to think of it, studies related to climate seem to have the same failing.
Make no mistake, these people are wanna be control freaks. This is a massive political power grab an we are being attacked on all fronts. How we travel (EV), where we get our electricity and now what we eat, next it will be what we wear. Probably those cute Moa suits.
However, at least in the US there is a point to be gleaned from some of this and it does cause mayhem. If you live below a certain income scale, determined by wages and dependents, you qualify for food stamps (EBT electronic benefits transfer) that you can use to purchase food.
What food?
Why any food that has a nutrition label. Seriously. Soda, “energy drinks”, candy, potato chips, anything with a label even if the label says “you are an idiot to eat this”. Some States allow the use at fast food places.
Taxpayers pay for people to eat food that is making them obese which in turn leads to major life threatening disease processes that are at epidemic levels and affecting younger and younger people. The military is finding it difficult to meet recruiting requirements with so many younger people being obese. These people then need a lifetime of expensive medical treatment and since they cannot afford it again the taxpayers are hit either directly or indirectly in the wallet.
Both my wife and daughter are doctors and I hear the sad stories all the time. Compliance with dietary modifications and pharmaceuticals are disregarded and the patients return with advancing disease processes which require hospitalizations or advanced treatment. It is a long, very expensive, slide into premature failing health for the individual and the taxpayers who must bare the burden.
In the States taxpayers are literally paying people to eat until they are sick and then paying to treat them. A world gone mad.
A system with zero accountability or personal responsibility ends with human tragedy. Give someone choices with consequences, including negative ones, and you get better results. Remove the consequences and you get chaos.
Typically I am not a big fan of Ayn Rand. However it seems she was prophetic about parasites. The climate parasites are determined to destroy our forests our power grids and now our food supply.
Ayn Rand, at the end if Atlas Shrugged writes if the lights going out and a famine starting because of the madness and obsessions of the “looters”.
We have watched the climate consensus damage the power grids, increase the price of power while reducing the quality. We watch them impose forestry practices that burn entire towns and kill dozens while blaming the victims.
Now the climate consensus wants to bring that track record to the world food supply.
Enough is enough.
Stop these nonsensical irrational climate obsessed fools before they do more damage.
Maybe it’s time to update your opinion of Ayn Rand.
My favorite line: “Humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet. ”
It left me wondering if the earth was going to wobble off its axis….
Well the northern magnetic bearing is having a bit of a wobble at the moment and it is something to keep an eye on rather than CO2 or any of the suggestions in this study.
Look up “Mao’s giant jump” .. it was a funny 1970’s physics article 🙂
At the time there were 1.5Billion in China so you get them to all jump off a 1m platform at the same time. These days there is 6Billion.
Energy released per person = mass * 9.8m/s/s * height
Plug in average mass and height and you have the energy released into the earth surface.
You go from a small but measurable tremor to a very small earthquake depending on mass and height.
http://www.convertalot.com/earthquake_power__calculator.html
There is another version called “Mao’s giant plunge” where everybody jumps into the ocean and the resulting displacement wave wipes out nations 🙂
The only threat to the food supply is from those who conspire to control it.
+10
You seldom meet anyone more arrogant than a doctor.
When these medical geniuses have eradicated disease from human beings they alter their focus to “fixing the planet”.
These are the kind of people attracted to a movement against fossil fuels and capitalism. All those tree hugger eco wackos bring their little pet cause and tie it to the climate train.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/16/beef-and-climate-change/
Feeding material that humans cannot – or will not – eat, to animals is one of the classic ways of REDUCING waste.
We farmers don’t spend our time stuffing human-quality food down the necks of livestock, because we make more$$ selling it for human consumption. It is the less-edible produce, by-products and I edibles that go into livestock feed. If you think that this isn’t the case, spend three months eating grass and get back to me. Or try eating the protein meal left after the oil is extracted from canola. Or bread made from grain that was subject to prolonged wet weather, just before harvest.
Uneaten food used to be collected and fed to pigs, but now it is wasted, because health regulations have banned this practice due to concerns about propagating disease. That food is still tossed out because it is stale, moldy or passed its use-by date. Do any of these supposed experts think that forcing people to eat outdated food is the solution to our problems?
It’s easy to talk about “waste”, but not so easy to come up with a realistic solution.
And the dill says “…………………………………………………Food waste is also an issue in high-income countries, where it is primarily caused by consumers and can be resolved through campaigns to improve shopping habits, help understand ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ dates,…….”
A stealth scanning electron microscope is required to see ‘best before’ (use by date) advice’s and ingredients that manufacturers do not, or legally not constrained to ‘clearly’ show in general….for example tobacco does not list ingredient additives, herbicide residue analysis and so on whatsoever.
For that matter
‘Feeding a growing population of 10 billion people by 2050 with a healthy and sustainable diet will be impossible without transforming eating habits, improving food production, and reducing food waste.’
First, you have to find 10 billion people who want to eat a healthy and sustainable diet.
No chance of that. 10 billion people don’t want to eat Michelle Obama School Lunches. Millions of American kids didn’t either. As her legacy is undone, the Lancet wants to inflict it on everyone.
Maybe Project Veritas will do a secret video of the Lancet lunch room to see what these clowns eat.
‘A shift towards the planetary health diet would ensure the global food system’
A lie. There is no ‘global food system.’ This is a call for global government control of agriculture. Billions will die.
It still amazes me how they can decide what is needed for a healthy diet:
The told me eggs were bad, I had high bad cholesterol and needed to take bad cholesterol lowering medication, then they told me my liver was being destroyed by the medication and finally they told me eggs are no longer a problem. As Emily Litella would say, never mind.
I have to check every morning before I drink my coffee to make sure it is okay that day.
The case for animals (disregard the speaker’s belief in climate change and listen the the rest about the need for animals).
Tell him to speak faster…had to turn it off after 15 seconds when he was on his third word.
Seems the NEJM is in competition with the Lancet with respect to climate hystery.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1817067?query=TOC
Utter crap, Holand is the second biggest food exporter after the US in GROSS tonnage. It is a tiny country. How? Very high tech production. We can easily feed 10 billion. We could feed 100 billion if the entire world adopted these methods.
Hey, if we* can’t feed 10 billion, there won’t be 10 billion.
*I don’t like “we” in this context. It implies a collective responsibility.
2500 kcal per day isn’t enough for outdour labouring work in a cold climate. In a previous carreer I was an oil-field mudlogger, on jobs from Australia to Shetland. When the roughnecks are ‘tripping’ in or out of the hole, it’s really hard physical work. With deep problematic wells you could be doing that for a full 12-hour shift. In the N. Sea roughnecks would eat over 5000 kcal per day , and not put on weight. When we had trouble on a well, I’d be idle after a couple of hours clearing up, so I’d go and spell the guys on the drill floor so they could get a rest and some food. Punishing physical labour. Steak tasted pretty good afterwards.
As for the composition of the rations these idiots are proposing…
50 g nuts per day fpr 7.7 billion people works up to 144 million metric tonnes per annum.
Current global nut production (tree and ground nuts) is about 44 million tonnes.
How’s that going to work?
Who gets the nuts?
Who’s gone nuts?
I’m all for telling liberals they have to eat bugs to save the world.
Really, I am.
And that they have to eat them when they are ALIVE.
That’s when it’s best for the environment.
That got things going.
And, as far as I see, indoctrination from primary school works, even among the skeptics.
Lovely example= pet cats
Everyone imagines that cats (and dogs in fact) are carnivores i.e. that they have to eat a diet revolving around meat. So that’s what we feed them and seemingly our pet cats especially wont touch anything else.
But then, many pet cats become ill and die from kidney failure. The Learned and Intelligent Ones assert that this is because of their diet – high in protein – and that the by/waste products of all that protein are to blame.
Good grief. Who in their right mind is gonna see Mother Nature creating a system like that?
Creating a creature that is effectively poisoned by its own diet.
Are you mad, drunk, high on sugar or some other mind bending drug?
Cats are Lipivores – they are fat eaters.
Out in the wild, the big cats will go out on wild killing sprees (as claimed by the likes of David Attenborough at least) and seemingly catch and eat meat flesh.
No. The scavengers get to eat the meat – the lions drink the blood, eat the brain, liver, kidneys, crunch the bones to get the bone-marrow and most determinedly, clear the carcass of fat.
And THAT is what we are supposed to eat.
We are Lipivores, like the cats and the dogs that became our ‘pets’ & friends, because, we shared the same diet. Fat.
Your, mine, our, everyone’s teacher at school got it wrong.
Like a few other things also…..
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/fatballs-food-trend-energy-protein-bliss-snack-healthy-foodie-butter-mct-oil-meal-replacement-a8095296.html
Fat has the beauty that it is not addictive like sugar is – hence it is self-limiting in its consumption and because of its high energy content, you only need very small amounts.
With just a modicum of care, it stores really well also.- – SATURATED fat that is.
Vegetable fat, with its carbon-carbon double bonds is in fact a potent poison – just one more method that plants use to ‘suggest’ to critters that eating them is NOT a good idea
“Humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet. Sustainability of the food system must therefore be defined from a planetary perspective. Five key environmental processes regulate the state of the planet. Our definition of sustainable food production requires that we use no additional land, safeguard existing biodiversity, reduce consumptive water use and manage water responsibly, substantially reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, produce zero carbon dioxide emissions,…” Professor Rockström continues.
OK stop the presses! If these authors cannot even understand the basic elements of the Scientific Method, and insist on repeating falsehoods from global warming propaganda, then I do not have to read further.
Atmospheric CO2 is essential for plant life (and ~all life) on Earth – atmospheric CO2 is good and more is better – it IS that simple! Increasing CO2 is already having a major positive impact on crop yields – did they mention that?
What about the fact that 40% of the huge USA corn crop is devoted to producing fuel ethanol? What about re-allocating all food-to-fuel acreage to food production for human consumption?
If the authors cannot understand these concepts, then they have NO credibility.
Agreed, they don’t – just like the pseudo “climate science” generally.
Food production and security have always been highly political. Only the last decades the EU has allowed some market mechanisms in agricultural produce. Mostly the issue was overproduction and corresponding low farmer income requiring tariffs and export subsidies. Increasing demand should reduce those worries. Famine and hunger are not a result of the planet not being able to feed the human population but mostly of political and military conflicts. The issue should be monitored but no need for alarmism in that respect. The obesity and health issue is a different story, but I believe that once we really understand the problem and its causes it can be dealt with. So what does the Lancet story add but alarmism?
If diet is the key to longevity I will eat as my parents and grandparents did. Beef, pork, lamb, chicken, fish of several varieties. Vegetables were potatoes, carrots, turnip, cabbage, parsnip. Bread was always white and homemade. Eggs, bacon, tea, no coffee, cereal was oatmeal with brown sugar and real cream.. My mother’s family all lived into their nineties, my mother passing this past year at 99. My father’s genes were not quite that good as he and his family only lived to their late 80s dad passing at 88 from pneumonia. All nonsense aside, genetics will prevail, unless of course you manage to abuse your body to an extent that causes an early death.
For those of us who have one side of the family having a history of dying young (mid50s to mid60s…yikes), we hope to do better than them.
Yes…genetics, and some luck, and staying active and engaged in body and mind…and just using common sense: If there is a problem, go see a darn doctor. How many die because of stubbornness and the belief that everything can be toughed out? Modern medical technology is useless to those who fail to utilize it.
Zoe Harcombe has an excellent rebuttal to the Lancet Here: http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2019/01/the-eat-lancet-diet-is-nutritionally-deficient/
From the article:
Macronutrients
The “Healthy reference (EAT) diet (based on 2,500 calories, so for an adult male) has the following macronutrient composition:
Protein Fat Carbohydrates
Grams 90 100 329
Calories 358 903 1,316
As a % of calories 14% 35% 51%
Micronutrients
The EAT diet is based on an adult male. An adult female would likely consume four fifths of the above diet and thus four fifths of the above vitamins and minerals. Notwithstanding this, the above diet is deficient in the following nutrients:
Vitamin B12 – the US RDA is 2.4mcg, the EAT diet is slightly deficient in providing 2.27mcg. I would not mention this nutrient but for the comment in Table 1 that animal items can be replaced with plant protein options and these will not provide any B12. (There is an amusing error on p16 of the 51 page report. It says “The only exception is vitamin B12 that is low in animal-based diets.” I think they mean plant-based diets!)
Retinol (the form in which the body needs vitamin A – we cannot rely on carotene to be converted). The EAT diet provides just 17% of retinol recommended.
Vitamin D – the EAT diet provides just 5% of vitamin D recommendation and some of that provided will have come from plants and not be D3, which is the body’s preferred form.
Vitamin K – the USDA is not ideal when it comes to vitamin K. It does not distinguish between K1 (primarily found in leafy green vegetables) and K2 (primarily found in fermented foods and some foods of animal origin). 72% of the vitamin K in the EAT diet came from the broccoli (K1). As is the case with all nutrients, the animal form (K2) is better absorbed by the body.
Sodium – the EAT diet provides just 22% of the sodium recommendation. Sodium is so often demonised that people forget that it is a vital nutrient.
Potassium – the EAT diet provides just 67% of potassium recommended.
Calcium – more seriously, the EAT diet provides just 55% of calcium recommended.
Iron – the EAT diet provides 88% of iron recommended. Again, the body better absorbs heme iron, which comes from meat, poultry, seafood and fish. The US recommendations state: “The RDAs for vegetarians are 1.8 times higher than for people who eat meat. This is because heme iron from meat is more bioavailable than nonheme iron from plant-based foods, and meat, poultry, and seafood increase the absorption of nonheme iron” (Ref 2).
I have analysed separately the 7g beef, 7g pork, 29g chicken and 28g of fish, to find the maximum amount of heme iron (some of the iron in these foods is non-heme) and it amounts to 1.1mg – just 6% of the iron intake recommended. Given that the rest of the iron is non-heme, the deficiency is far greater than the number 88% suggests, as the requirement is 1.8 times higher.
Omega-3 – essential fatty acids. Unfortunately, the tool doesn’t aggregate to the fatty acid level, but this diet is highly likely deficient in omega-3 and highly likely (given the 350 calories of nutritionally poor, highly unsaturated, vegetable oils) has an unhealthy omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Fish is the best source of omega-3 and the 28g of fish in the EAT diet provides 284mg of omega-3 fatty acids vs. an RDA of 1.6g for adult males (Ref 3).
There are numerous other issues with this plant-biased advice. Not least – what will all these plants be grown in when there is no top soil left because we have replaced soil-rejuvenating ruminants with soil-raping plants? (Ref 4)
However, the focus of this post was to highlight that the EAT diet is nutritionally deficient and that has been done
———————-
Also, the lead author, Walter Willet, has conflicts of interest (that’s putting it mildly — he’s a lifelong proponent of a vegetarian/vegan diet):
https://www.scribd.com/document/397606854/Walter-Willett-Potential-Conflicts-of-Interest
Zoe excellent scrutiny. But why should anyone be surprised when the Rockefeller foundation is involved and Christiana Figueres ex UNFCC now has a nice comfortable chair at the Lancet.
Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on planetary health.
Prof Tim Lang lead commissioning author department of sociology. When the numbers didn’t fit ramped up methane’s relationship with our atmosphere to 56 times more potent than Co2 and N2O 280 times more potent than Co2. CH4 0.00017% and N2O 0.00003%.
This is about using deceit and prevarication to get Paris imposed across the board and like the muppets we are in the UK greens know we are a soft target with all political parties buying in to green propaganda. Lord Deben CCC remains intent on vaporising UK livestock farming because it represents 7% of UK greenhouse gas emissions but that 7% on a global basis represents 2 millionths of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Infantilism.
Merely as a clarrification about Vitamin K, which is a co-factor to carboxylate 17 human proteins for metabolic functions. We humans can produce K2 in the form of menaquinon 4 configuration; this K2 is processed by us from plant K1 ingested. Animals products eaten will also provide K2 & mostly in the form of menaquinon-4.
I BROUGHT up this Lancet study in a low carb nutrition group..lots of replies and other posts by experts like Zoe. I DO believe people will put a stop to “erecting the planet” when it comes to being taxed by globalists to even get the food they don’t want! I think typical meat eating American males, and the meat eating low carb/ dieters who are growing by leaps (abandoning surgery, processed foods/grains) will HAVE to choose “Fight for my cheeseburgers or be forced to eat “cricket and termite” protein burgers.”
https://www.facebook.com/NinaTeicholz/posts/1065206050347443:0?hc_location=ufi
http://carnisostenibili.it/en/considerations-on-the-eat-lancet-commission-report/amp/?fbclid=IwAR06iCwf1U-2L_RnAnKt9qThTnR0GFFps-SD0E3ubzK0KUhgGQOGe1AzbIM
akkk typos : Protecting the planet Not: “erecting the planet”
and abandoning sugary not ” abandoning surgery,”
Can’t locate an edit or delete option… is there one?
Here you can see how these people make an example of how to lead a sustainable life:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/globe-trotting-billionaire-behind-campaign-13872067
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6605391/Glamorous-billionaire-dubbed-hypocrite.html
Classic example of “Do what I say, not what I do!”
Reminds me of Dr. Suzuki’s lifestyle. Do as I say… etc. etc.
Or Gore, Or Leo DiCaprio, or any of the other Climate Snake Oil Salesmen.
ALL HYPOCRITES.
More bacon!
Sounds like it will be easier to burn off the methane clathrate deposits and get eh Earth back to at least 800ppm of CO2.
Hard to know where to start: The hubris of believing one know’s exactly what constitutes a healthy diet? The ignorance in believing that we all have exactly the same nutritional requirements, ignoring the fact that each one of us is a unique ‘chemical factory’, using different catalysts, with differing absortion abilities, and hosting unique microbial populations?
It is of little matter. My big question is, we should make these dietary changes TO WHAT END? My parents were careful about maintaining healthy weights. They would occasionally diet, giving up favorite foods like ice cream; drinking disgusting (imo) liquid diet meals instead of having a proper lunch. My father died in his eighties after suffering dementia for several years; my mother in her nineties, having experienced a decade of Alzheimer’s.
They should have eaten the ice cream.
Hey Alarmists! Don’t tell me that I should pay carbon taxes if you’re not willing to eat a bug.
We all know that making insects a dietary staple is the best path to saving the world. If you’re not willing to do do that, then you’re not serious enough about global warming to do any preaching.
There are far too many comments for me to read, but of the large amount that I did see I note that people are indignant about the contents of this Lancet document. But more importantly, does nobody consider that this is part of AGENDA 21/2030, or Sustainabile Development – the latter is a less sinister sounding couple of words.
Agenda 2030 is to be implemented by 2030, and is being acted upon by at least 190 countries in the world. People, please Google it and find out how our governments are going to take away our property rights, tell us what to eat, put us in “stack and pack” tiny apartments in buildings near railway tracks because there will be no gas, therefore no cars. Why do you think there are bicycle ranks all over the place? We will need permission to travel anywhere…look, read what your country has in store for you. Google your city and “sustainable Development” and/or Agenda 21 and see what comes up. This is not conspiracy theory.
I’m not sure my post got published.
Check out Agenda 2030 – we are headed for “The Hunger Games” – predictive programming.
ANOTHER waste of human effort. Where do these IDIOTS come from ?!?! None other than the EU in association with …. wait for it ….the commie UN. I have my little home garden, ~400 sqft that supports plenty of three verities of tomatoes, bell peppers, onions and jalapenos, cucumbers and next to it are two giant pecan trees. The city doesn’t allow farm animals, otherwise I would have a couple of sheep, maybe a milking cow, all on ~1/2 acre. Hey, I’m an old hick farm boy from the panhandle of Texas, a retired engineer and a US Navy vet. Call me whatever you want, but remember Texas is STILL a red state and conservative. Remember Goliad, the Alamo and San Jacinto. Build the Damn Southern Border Wall, NOW. Other wise we vets and red bloodied hunters will have to compensate by occupying the border with our personal weapons of defense.
Actually there are a lot of real (as opposed to imaginary) pollution problems caused by growing too many animals for meat. People really could be healthier and have a more benign influence on the environment if they ate more vegetables and less meat and grains. But maybe not on a first date: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3208257/Recipe-successful-date-Don-t-order-salad-pay-bill-make-sure-50.html
The EAT-Lancet report is correct about the problems we face. But the dietary solution offered is the opposite of helpful. We’ve been down this road before. We have no reason to think that the failure of the past will, if repeated, lead to success in the future.
If you’re interested, I wrote about EAT-Lancet and summarized the views of many others:
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/dietary-dictocrats-of-eat-lancet/