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StoriesReport: Cut red-meat eating by 80 percent to save the planet?
, medical review by Dr. Bret Scher, MD
in Bad science, Environment / Animal protection, Meat, New study 
A new, high-profile report was released this week, which claims that in order to save the planet from climate-change disaster, the world must drastically cut meat-eating by more than 80 per cent in developed countries.
Moreover, the report claims consumption of all animal sourced foods, including eggs, butter, cheese and dairy products, must also be drastically reduced across the world for planetary health. Instead, the consumption of legumes, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and healthy grains needs to increase in some regions by more than 100 percent, the report says.
What should you make of this sweeping edict? Below we discuss four key facts that it could help to know when trying to understand this report and when considering how you should weigh its recommendations.
First, however, some quick background: The EAT-Lancet Commission report, three years in the making, was published in The Lancet on January 17. It was the work of 19 commissioners plus an additional 18 co-authors from 16 countries who comprise the EAT Forum. They state that unhealthy and unsustainable food poses a global risk to people and the planet and that they represent the “science-based global platform for food system transformation.”
In an accompanying commentary, Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton and deputy editor Tamara Lucas say the journal’s publication of this sweeping and controversial report “could be neither more timely nor more urgent” because “civilisation is in crisis. We can no longer feed our population a healthy diet while balancing planetary resources.”
The Lancet commentary: The 21st-century great food transformation
Take note: You will be hearing a lot about this report in the weeks and months to come as the well-funded EAT-Lancet commission launches a huge public relations push, with dozens of high-profile events lined up across the globe to promote its findings and recommendations.
The report, of course, is all over the news, too, with media not yet questioning the advice but simply reporting the 51-page report’s findings and recommendations.
BBC: The diet to save lives, the planet and feed us all?
Time: Less beef, more beans; Report recommends a new diet for planetary health
Guardian: New plant-focused diet would transform planet’s future, say scientists
So, what does the proposed diet look like? Here is a visual of a typical day’s provisions:
- Nuts – 50 g a day
- Beans, chickpeas, lentils and other legumes – 75 g a day
- Fish – 28 g a day
- Eggs – 13 g a day (so one and a bit a week)
- Meat – 14 g a day of red meat and 29 g a day of chicken (equivalent to one meatball)
- Carbs – whole grains like bread and rice 232 g a day and 50 g a day of starchy vegetables
- Dairy – 250 g – the equivalent of one glass of milk
- Vegetables – (300 g) and fruit (200 g)
We want to re-assure you that including animal-sourced foods in your diet is safe for your health and safe for the planet by focusing on what we do know.
Here are four key facts
1. Meat and animal-sourced foods are healthy and nutritious
Animal-sourced foods like meat, eggs and dairy are healthy, nutritious foods that are uniquely satiating and provide more protein and nutrition per ounce than beans, legumes and other vegetable sources of protein.
Cardiologist and Diet Doctor team member Dr. Bret Scher notes that in his practice he has had many patients who have tried to adopt a strict vegetarian or even vegan diet but have not been able to sustain it due to health or hunger issues.
As a cardiologist, I’ve made healthy lifestyle recommendations to thousands of patients, and it is clear that the best lifestyle is one people can actually maintain over the long term. It turns out that animal protein and fat are uniquely satiating — thus keeping hunger at bay — and therefore a friend to any dieter.
Scher notes, however, there is no one-size-fits-all diet:
It is lamentable that the EAT-Lancet authors should want to impose their ideas about healthy diets on all populations worldwide.
Others, such as The Nutrition Coalition, are also noting the report’s proclamation that red meat is bad for health has no firm basis in scientific research, being solely based on weak epidemiological data.
The Nutrition Coalition: Scientific evidence on red meat and health
While a healthy vegetarian low-carb diet is possible and Diet Doctor provides a large number of vegetarian recipes and vegetarian information, in no way is it necessary for better health to avoid animal sourced foods.
2. EAT-Lancet diet is nutritionally incomplete
Would the report’s recommended diet provide all the nutrients humans need to thrive?
UK dietitian Zoë Harcombe, PhD has done an excellent analysis of the nutritional components of the EAT-Lancet report’s suggested global reference diet and finds it comes up short in nutritional needs.
She has found that the diet is seriously deficient in B12, retinol, vitamin D, iron, vitamin K2, sodium, potassium and calcium. The diet is also deficient in omega-3, an essential fatty acid for nerve and brain health and has unhealthy amounts of inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids.
Zoë Harcombe: The EAT Lancet diet is nutritionally deficient
3. Ideological bias underlies the report
Was this three-year endeavour the result of a broad-based research effort, that included scientific researchers of all stripes and backgrounds, with no-preconceived notions, weighing all the evidence and coming to an unbiased conclusion?
No, not at all. In fact, many of the leading commissioners on the report have for years been promoting a plant-based diet and publicising the negative health and environmental impacts of animal-sourced products.
In short, the plant-based “solution” came first, which lets us know that it is not a response to a well-investigated understanding of the problem, but an opportunistic application of an ideology to a complex world problem.
Belgium academic, Professor Frederic LeRoy and UK professor Martin Cohen, writing for the European Food Agency (EFA) expose the industrial money from the agricultural soy sector and from vegan billionaire interests behind the EAT-Lancet endeavour.
LeRoy & Cohen: The Eat-Lancet controversial campaign
They note:
A closer look into its background reveals some perturbing elements. The danger is that the overstatement of certain concerns will result in an anti-livestock narrative, create a false impression of scientific consensus and do more harm than good in a world in need of nutrient-rich meals and sustainable food systems.
Author Nina Teicholz, of The Nutrition Coalition, has examined the potential ideological bias of one of the leading authors of the report, Harvard’s Dr. Walter Willet. His potential conflict of interest includes decades of promoting a plant-based diet, as well as writing books on vegetarianism and developing vegetarian food products.
Nutrition coalition: Walter Willet’s potential conflict of interest
Completely absent from the commission were any of the leading global researchers who study the role of ruminants in improving soil health. Also missing was any consideration of the global movement to use improved livestock practices to draw carbon out of the air and sequester carbon in the soil as a way to help address climate change.
Which leads to the final point…
4. Animals are an essential part of a healthy environment
Livestock like cows, pigs, sheep and goats graze on lands that are unable to support crop-based agriculture. They eat grass and stubble and other organic matter that humans cannot eat and turn it into nutritious proteins and fats. Their manure and urine fertilize the soil, providing a rich substrate on which plants can feed.
Done right, it is a holistic, ecologically-balanced cycle that benefits the land and planet, the humans who eat the food and the livestock itself, who are raised in humane and healthy conditions.
That said, there is no doubt that our current system of industrialized, polluting agriculture can be — and MUST be — hugely improved. There is also no question that climate change poses a fundamental and urgent challenge to how we create enough healthy, wholesome food to feed more than 9 billion people without destroying the planet. However, livestock have a key role in the solutions and are not merely the problem that needs to be eliminated.
Recently, Diet Doctor went into great depth exploring the nuances about these important issues. The result of more than four months of research and interviews, the series presented a possible way forward to have our healthy diet and our thriving planet, too.
As well, others are writing passionately and pointedly about these complex issues. We encourage you to explore these other resources.
Sustainable Dish: 20 Ways EAT-Lancet’s global diet is wrongfully vilifying meat
Animal Agricultural Alliance: Statement on EAT-Lancet Report, FAQ
Our food systems do need transformation — away from highly processed, nutrient-poor, sugary foods that undermine human health and promote obesity and chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes. Our industrial agricultural systems need transformation, too, into a more holistic, sustainable model that restores and enhances soil health and include animals as an essential part of a healthy eco-system.
The EAT-Lancet Commission, while endeavoring to address the issues, has come up with a simplistic, pre-conceived solution that does not yet have the balance and the way forward right.
We can and must do better.
Earlier
“If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer”
New study: Beef can have a positive impact on the environment
Meat and dairy belong in a healthy diet, experts say
A low-carb diet does not mean a low-fiber diet
Is a low-protein, high-carb diet the key for a better aging brain? Maybe in mice
Could a low-carb diet shorten your life?
A seemingly minor point in all of this is that Nature evolved environments based on perennial plants and animals interacting. Vegans seem to want to replace that with annual plants, using poison to kill all other life and leaving the land open to erosion in the off season.
Cargill is now mainly a soya bean company. ADM, Bunge and Cargill are really destroying a lot of Cerrado and Amazon in Brazil for planting and to forms transportation paths to get soy to ports to ship to China. China consumes 70% of brazil's soya. Cargill is one of the funders in this EAT Forum project through the FreSH initiative. . Cargill is one of the largest investors in cultured stem cell proteins. Amino acids in cell media will come from industrially grown soy.
Nestle uses a lot of chicken meal, fish and soy meal in its various brands of pet foods like Purina Dog & Cat chows. Chicken and farmed fish are fed a lot of soy. Nestle is one of the funders of this project as well and is also getting more heavily into the plant based protein sector where it will have additional uses for soy isolates.
Unilever is another funder, and a huge user of soy bean oil in its various brands like "I can't believe it;s not butter". They've provided funding and even researchers to all the pro-polyunsaturated research that Walter Willett and the Harvard Chan school have done to prove the "heart healthfulness" of these hexane heat extracted easily oxidized inflammatory oils. High Omega 6's inhibit ALA to EPA to DHA conversion, so I guess everyone who follows this diet will need to supplement DHA pills along with B12 pills. or take fish/krill oil (which depletes ocean feed fish).
Bayer, which bought Monsanto, sells GMO seeds as well as agrochemicals as do BASF and Syngenta . BASF is a big producers of mutagenic rice and wheat varieties and their paired pesticides. So no wonder rice, wheat, corn and soy as well as seed and soy oils are still such a large part of this diet.
So lots of ironic bedfellows for a diet purporting to be 'sustainable."
Oh, and then the part about integrated systems instead of monocrops. Again more irony. since ruminants are the best animals to integrate to graze cover crops, and crop residues as well as cycle nutrients. Thus the well managed ruminants reduce or eliminate tillage and herbicide use plus also eliminate the need for NPK's. These researchers need to read Gabe Brown's new book Dirt to Soil and visit his farm if they want to see a system of farming that's truly regenerative. All these academicians are proposing is a system of food production that is trying to perpetuate a degraded system. Not much point in sustaining a degraded resource. You have to restore soil health, microbiology and ecosystems function to repair the carbon and water cycles as well as the geospheric methane sink
Don't think they had a single soil scientist on their team. How can you even have any discussion about food production without understanding soil ecosystems and how they function? .Soil scientists like Dr. David Johnson, Dr. Elaine Ingham, Dr. Kris Nichols, Dr. Christine Jones could teach this group of 36 a lot of things that were obviously overlooked in this report. So would Dr. David Montgomery, a geologist.
A better understanding of hydroxyl radical tropospheric sinks would also have been very useful since all they did was regurgitate reductive out of context false methane math Maybe next time they'll talk to Dr. Myles Allen, Dr. R.G. Prinn and Dr. Matthew Rigby.
Though the EAT Forum obviously is agenda driven rather than science driven. So, even Stevie Wonder can see that the real desire is simply to manufacture consent as well as a market and future market for the products that the funders sell now and will sell in the future.
Monsanto, Big Agro, Big Pharm, and the companies producing fake foods are afraid of the truth coming out - it's easier for them to divert the microscope (which is on them) over to the lowly cow. It's time to focus on them, seriously.
Second of all, no vegans want to get rid of animals and plant annual plants and spray pesticides. Vegans love all animals and they just want people to leave them alone, so they can be treated just like your cats and dogs with respect and love. No living animal wants to be hurt and die. Make the connection, please: there's no difference between a cow and a cat, a dog and a pig- they all have feelings, they all feel pain and love the same way. Spend some time with these animals, raise a baby cow, see how she/he likes to run around happily just like your dog, open your heart to feeling compassion to all animals, all beings. And for the plants- most vegans are health conscious and avoid eating food with pesticides altogether.
Yes- let all animals go free and graze on beautiful pastures, but what the report is saying that this is simply not possible UNLESS people stop eating THIS much meat. 95% of your meat comes from factory farming, and the way these farms are run is unsustainable bc they use huge amounts of feed, water and produce more waste than you can even imagine: that waste by the way goes into our rivers and lakes, into our drinking water, into our soil and pollutes it all, including the vegetable we eat.
And lastly, why is so bad that some of these scientist have been promoting plant-based diets? These people go into these kind of fields eating meat (most people aren't born vegan!) and once they do the research for years and make these discoveries and connections, they can't go back to eating meat, bc you feel compelled to do the right thing and be a responsible citizen.
Change is hard, but with growing population our planet needs for us to make changes. And if you all support it or not, it's actually going to happen- maybe not in your lifetime, but it is going to happen. Mother Nature is already showing us how mad she is with her devastating droughts, wild fires, earthquakes, sea levels rising and other disastrous weather patterns.
I grew up in the city but moved my family to a farming area to show them where their food comes from. We raise our own chickens for meat and eggs and buy a pig every spring for Christmas dinner and a lamb for Easter. We get our dairy from the local farm and try to get our beef from the local ranch when they have shares available. The goal is to start a meat rabbit breeding program in the next few years if we can move to an area with a better 'rabbit' climate. (Ever seen a rabbit in 100+ degree heat?!)
My husband says our chickens are spoiled more than our kids. They get our kitchen scraps and a homemade feed without soy. Heck! They have a pool in spring and summer and a mist curtain to keep the summer heat at bay. In the fall they get all the pumpkins they can eat and have heated waterers in winter. I don't even use artificial light in winter to keep them laying. If they stop laying in winter because of the lack of sunlight then it is how they are meant to live.
My point is to try being less preaching without reading the full article (there were 3 guides about 'green' meat). It is clear you are passionate about the animals. Most people who are health conscious are as well. Who wants to eat beef from a cow who in locked in a small stall eating artificial feeds full of hormones and soy never seeing the sunlight?! Yuck!!
On this planet Earth there is ultimatel one rule: est lunch or be lunch. When the lion chases the gazelle because it is hungry, or the lioness needs to feed her young ones ( and aren’t they cute?) tell it should not do do because the gazelle should live free. Enough said.
Fish – 28g
Eggs – 13g
Meat – 14g of red meat and 29g of chicken
Vegetables – 300 g
Wonder where to find my protein?
Read that again. "We can no longer feed our population a healthy diet." They admit that eating meat provides a healthy diet, and that what they now recommend is LESS healthy.
Makes no sense on so many levels.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/201901/eat-lan...
Red meat, white meat and fish production are highly successful businesses where the welfare of the animals is of little interest when there are millions to be made.
Humans have been eating fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds for millions more years than we have been eating meat; and it would appear that we have
survived! Moreover, the only essential vitamin that a vegetarian would require in a supplement form is B12, and this is only because we have become so ‘clean’ and our soil has become so polluted.
I suggest that those of you who are interested go to nutritionfacts.org and check out Dr Michael Greger.
The common practice of raising beef is undoubtedly polluting the planet like nothing else and until the practice of using feed lots as aposed to the sustainable grazing practice the problem will continue.
EAT promotes the one food group we don’t need once again and the long term end result will be billions more suffering from avoidable Ill heath. Probably the cost of medication bankrupting countries around the world too
Vegetarians less healthy than meat eaters!
Modern humans are very wasteful, inefficient and lazy, not to mention greedy and self serving. We have become far too dependant on government subsidized food production and the wealth it brings to those entities manufacturing our food.
Climate change is driven by the cycles of the sun, NOT some very minor and insignificant man-made greenhouse gas. Research the Grand Solar Minimum, and the historical climate records to learn about how the sun naturally affects the earth's climate. We are heading for a severe global cooling period over the next 30-40 years. We will be seeing crop losses on a devastatingly widespread scale shortly. We will need protein from animals who are naturally hardier to withstand cold than frozen plants. We will need to grow plants in greenhouses-type ways that will be impossible.
What will vegan and vegetarian pet owners be feeding their beloveds if they obtain their goal and there is no meat to feed them? OMG!
...It's started. Here's something I saw on the Australia ABC web page: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-27/your-healthy-diet-in-the-age-o.... The authors have been pushing similar barrows over the years. The strong link to climate change emanates from the sponsoring organisation (see its Annual Report 2018 here: https://www.dea.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DEAAnnualReport2018...). Clearly it has an agenda to push which it has hitched to the EAT "report". The article on the ABC has more to do about switching to alternative energies and eliminating coal-sourced power systems than it actually has to do about a beneficial diet for the population of the planet.
So, do you agree or not?
We need to control our numbers before drastic measures have to be taken. People will only change when there is no other choise, governments need to start programs to cut population numbers now. The planet cannot support us much longer.
No body seem to be paying this problem any attention, why?