Food today: Eating healthily and sustainably

The Publication

Unhealthy diets pose a greater risk of morbidity, particularly mental disorders, and mortality than does unsafe sex, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined. Transformation to healthy diets by 2050 will require substantial dietary shifts, including a greater than 50% reduction in global consumption of unhealthy foods, such as red meat and sugar, and a greater than 100% increase in consumption of healthy foods, such as fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes. These dietary changes to healthy diets are likely to benefit human health substantially, averting about 10·8–11·6 million deaths per year, a reduction of 19·0–23·6%.

Our Response

This 2019 report shows how seriously people are, at last, beginning to take the importance of poor nutrition for global health.  Some believe that ‘mind change’, consequent on poor nutrition, may be even more detrimental for our future than climate change, since clear headed, rational thinking is going to be crucial for solving the latter.