When it comes to diet, it is not up to anyone other than individuals to dictate what they should or should not eat. People need to make the decision based on what is right for them and have confidence that whatever regime they adopt, they can make decisions to reduce their carbon footprint. He told the Guardian that the study made it clear that the increase in the world`s population could be fuelled by healthy eating and that the Paris targets could be achieved if major changes were made to food production. For example, half of food waste would result in CO2 emissions within the 2 degree Celsius warming limit targets. A second report, published Wednesday by researchers from the universities of Oxford, Harvard, Tufts and Adelaide, and published in the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) makes a similar case, but looks around the world. It takes into account both the health and environmental impact of the nutrition guidelines and how they are compatible with global greenhouse gas reduction and development targets. “The world`s largest contributors to the climate crisis can no longer ignore the environmental costs of what we eat,” said Stephanie Feldstein, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, who did not participate in either study. “Integrating sustainability into national food guidelines is an important way to recognize that food policy is a climate policy.” An organic – or more generally agro-ecological – scenario would require us to eat differently and use our country differently. Our diet would be richer in plant and plant proteins and would include much less ultra-processed foods. We would eat much less pork and poultry, and less meat overall, if we stopped intensive production of animals. But ruminant meat would remain an integral part of our diet if it were reduced.
Based on a daily diet of 2,500 calories, the report proposes the following breakdown for the proposed diet which, according to the authors of the report, can be tinkered with on many omnivores, vegetarian and vegan diets: the responsibility for the introduction of a plant-based diet rests most with high-income countries, such as the United States, which currently consume the largest amounts of animal products. Food models can only be considered “sustainable” if they meet both nutritional and environmental objectives, and many low- and middle-income countries will likely need to increase their consumption of animal foods to cope with the high prevalence of malnutrition. To compensate for the resulting increase in emissions, high-income countries still need to reduce the absorption of animal products. In addition to general principles such as reducing meat and milk consumption, differences in global food production emissions should also be addressed. A global shift to a “plant-rich diet” would allow the greatest reduction in emissions from food production, according to the study “This framework is universal for all food crops and production systems in the world, with a high potential for local adaptation and scalability,” the report says. It noted that at least two-thirds of countries` nutrition guidelines were not on track to meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets set by the Paris Agreement. Despite its monumental objectives, the report is nuanced. For example, the authors recognize that animal feed should not be completely eliminated.