Food choices today, impact health of both ‘people and planet’ tomorrow

The food we eat has huge potential to improve both human health and environmental sustainability, but too often today it is posing a threat to both people and planet, according to a new report by the EAT-Lancet Commission, launched at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Co-organized by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Permanent Mission of Norway, the head of the agency’s New York office, Satya Tripathi, noted that it was his home country of India, which had originated the aphorism that “you are what you eat”.

“And it not just about food, it’s about process, it’s about what it results in”, he continued, saying that this “age-old wisdom” has been “scientifically articulated in a very powerful manner” in the report, which pins down “the science, the numbers and the analytics of what you need to do to be healthy”.

The report argues that there is an immense challenge facing humanity to “provide a growing world population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems”, noting that while calorie production has kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people either lack sufficient food, consume low-quality diets or simply eat too much.

“A radical transformation of the global food system is urgently needed”, the report stressed, without which the world not only risks failing to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2015 Paris Agreement but leaves today’s children dealing with environmental degradation and a population increasingly suffering from malnutrition and preventable disease.

To move to a healthy diet, the report suggests that the world doubles its consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts while reducing at least by half, red meat and food with added sugar.

Original source: UN News
Published on 06 February 2019