Reply To: Meat eating and the flexitarianism
The Planetary Health Diet
Some may say all has been said that needs to be said. And anyway what we put on our plates is not a social decision but a choice we make as individuals. Most importantly, it is a question that the Party itself need not involve itself in. I still persist in challenging this view on this forum. What we eat is as important as how we organize production inside socialism and there are generalized assumptions that can be made which goes a long way to explaining how socialism will be a sustainable society.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46865204
“A diet has been developed that promises to save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet. Scientists have been trying to figure out how we are going to feed billions more people in the decades to come. Their answer – “the planetary health diet” – does not completely banish meat and dairy. But it requires a big shift in what we put on to our plates and turning to foods that we barely eat.”
For red meat it is a burger a week or a large steak a month, a couple of portions of fish and the same of chicken a week, but plants are where the rest of the protein in the diet will come from.
The researchers are recommending nuts and a good helping of legumes (that’s beans, chickpeas and lentils) every day instead. There’s also a major push on all fruit and veg, which should be make up half of every plate of food we eat. Although there’s a cull on “starchy vegetables” such as the humble potato or cassava which is widely eaten in Africa.
This diet plan requires changes to diets in pretty much every corner of the world.
Europe and North America need to cut back massively on red meat, East Asia needs to cut back on fish, Africa on starchy vegetables. Globally, the diet requires red meat and sugar consumption to be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts must double. North Americans need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils. For Europeans, eating 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds meets the guidelines.
“Humanity has never attempted to change the food system at this scale and this speed,” says Line Gordon, an assistant professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “Whether it’s a fantasy or not, a fantasy doesn’t have to bad… it’s time to dream of a good world,” she says.
The researchers, of course, remain constrained by the capitalist system. They look towards taxation to change eating behavior, seeing tobacco taxes as a success and expect red meat price increases to have similar result. Some truth in that as when meat was expensive in the past we ate less, mostly on Sundays and holidays. But industrialised livestock rearing brought those prices down.
The researchers say the diet will prevent around 11 million people dying each year. That number is largely down to cutting diseases related to unhealthy diets such as heart attacks, strokes and some cancers.
The researchers aim was to feed more people while:
minimising greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change
preventing any species going extinct
have no expansion of farmland
and preserve water
In order to make the numbers add up, it also requires a halving of food waste and to increase the amount of food produced on current farmland.
Humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet,” said Prof Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden, another author of the report. “This requires nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution.”
“The world’s diets must change dramatically,” said Walter Willett at Harvard University and one of the leaders of the commission convened by the Lancet medical journal and the Eat Forum NGO. “We are not talking about a deprivation diet here; we are talking about a way of eating that can be healthy, flavourful and enjoyable.”
“The planetary health diet is based on really hard epidemiological evidence, where researchers followed large cohorts of people for decades,” said Marco Springmann at Oxford University
Prof Guy Poppy, from the UK’s University of Southampton, and not part of the commission, said: “This ‘call to arms’ with its clear solutions is timely, comprehensively researched and deserves immediate attention.”
“This analysis is the most advanced ever conducted,” said Prof Alan Dangour, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and also not part of the team. “But there is a major question about the ability of populations to shift to such dietary recommendations and their wider public acceptability.”
The report acknowledges the radical change it advocates and the difficulty of achieving it: “Humanity has never aimed to change the global food system on the scale envisioned. Achieving this goal will require rapid adoption of numerous changes and unprecedented global collaboration and commitment: nothing less than a Great Food Transformation.”
Richard Horton and Tamara Lucas, editors at the Lancet, said in an editorial that global changes as set out by the planetary health diet were essential: “Civilisation is in crisis. We can no longer feed our population a healthy diet while balancing planetary resources. If we can eat in a way that works for our planet as well as our bodies, the natural balance will be restored.”
So do we as a Party for socialism adopt what can be describe as a denialist position akin to the climate change deniers and contrary to scientific opinion and be seen as condoning the lobbyists, such as Prof Nigel Scollan, at Queen’s University Belfast who is part of the industry-backed Meat Advisory Panel:
“This report tells us what we have known for millennia: an omnivorous diet is optimal. In the UK, encouraging people to eat less red meat and dairy will have little impact on the environment and is potentially damaging to people’s health.”
Well, he may talk of the UK but we talk for the world.
