Nature | December 03, 2021
More than 2 billion people are overweight or obese, mostly in the Western world, and 811 million are not getting enough calories or nutrition, mostly in low- and middle-income nations. At the same time, the current industrialized food system emits about one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and has other environmental impacts — which look set to rise as the world’s population increases and more people start to eat like Westerners. With both problems in mind, nutritionists reviewed the literature to craft a basic healthy diet composed of whole foods. Then the team set environmental limits for the diet, including carbon emissions, biodiversity loss and the use of fresh water, land, nitrogen and phosphorus. They ended up with a diverse and mainly plant-based meal plan that was meant to be nutritious and sustainable — a ‘planetary health’ diet. However, further studies showed that, owing to costs, switching to that diet would not be possible in many regions of the world.
Journal of People 