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.
###
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.
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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.