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.