Vegan diet could save millions of lives, cut global warming emissions – study
According to researchers, eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat could help the world prevent several million deaths per year by 2050, cut planet-warming emissions substantially, and save billions of dollars annually in healthcare costs and climate damage.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this is the first study to estimate the health and climate change impacts of a global shift towards a more plant-based diet.
Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Program on the Future of Food, lead author of the study, said that they don’t expect everybody to change their diets and lifestyle. But if they did, they’d live longer and help reduce the changes that are skewing the climate since what we eat significantly affects our health and the global environment.
The Oxford University researchers modeled the effects of four different diets by mid-century: a ‘business as usual’ scenario; one that follows global guidelines including minimum amounts of fruits and vegetables and limits on red meat, sugar and total calories; a vegetarian diet; and a vegan diet.
Adopting a diet in line with the global guidelines could avert 5.1 million deaths per year by 2050, while 8.1 million fewer people would die in a world of vegans who do not consume animal products, including eggs and milk.
When it comes to climate change, following dietary recommendations would cut food-related emissions by 29%, adopting vegetarian diets would cut them by 63% and vegan diets by 70%.
Dietary shifts could produce savings of US$700 billion to US$1 trillion per year on healthcare, unpaid care and lost working days, while the economic benefit of reduced greenhouse gas emissions could be as much as US$570 billion, the study found.
The economic value of health improvements could be comparable with, and possibly larger than, the value of the prevented damage from climate change, the researchers added. “The value of those benefits makes a strong case for increased public and private spending on programs aimed to achieve healthier and more environmentally sustainable diets”Springmann said.
According to Springmann, the study also looked at regional differences which could be used to identify the most suitable interventions for food production and consumption. For example, lower red meat consumption would have the biggest effect in East Asia, the West and Latin America, while boosting fruit and vegetable intake was found to be the largest factor in cutting deaths in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. On the other hand, lower calorie intake, leading to fewer overweight people, would play a key role in improving health in the Eastern Mediterranean, Latin America and Western nations.
But the change will not be a stroll in the park for the world. This means increasing the number of fruits and vegetables eaten globally by 25% and cutting red meat by 56%. Overall, this means consuming 15% fewer calories.
“We do not expect everybody to become vegan,” Springmann added. “But climate change impacts of the food system will be hard to tackle and likely require more than just technological changes. Adopting healthier and more environmentally sustainable diets can be a large step in the right direction.”
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