Well-balanced and predominantly plant-based diets can lead to improved nutrient levels, reduce premature deaths from chronic diseases by more than 20%, and lower greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer application, and cropland and freshwater use, globally and in most regions, a new study reports.
Well-balanced and predominantly plant-based diets can lead to improved nutrient levels, reduce premature deaths from chronic diseases by more than 20%, and lower greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer application, and cropland and freshwater use, globally and in most regions, a new study reports.
The study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, is the first to comprehensively assess the relationship between the health and nutritional impacts of different dietary-change strategies and their environmental impacts across all major world regions.
'The food people eat impacts their health and the health of the environment. Unhealthy diets, overconsumption, and hunger are leading to nutritional deficiencies and diet-related chronic diseases around the world. The food system is also a major cause for climate change, freshwater depletion, deforestation, and pollution of ecosystems, for example through over-application of fertilizers,' says Dr Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and the Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, who led the study.
'We investigated the aspects of our diets that we should change to improve health and nutrition around the world whilst at the same time reducing environmental impacts whenever possible.'
Read more at University of Oxford
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