- About half of American adults—117 million people—have one or more preventable chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and diet-related cancers.
- Plant based diets have greater environmental benefits and higher overall predicted health scores.
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) has released its scientific report in the lead up to the official release of the USDA’s 8th edition of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The DGAC has stated that overall the “higher consumption of animal-based foods was associated with higher estimated environmental impact, whereas consumption of more plant-based foods .. was associated with estimated lower environmental impact”.
The DGAC releases this report which forms the basis of the USDA’s updated dietary guidelines every 5 years and the American meat industry has crying foul for the best part of 2015 after hearing that the Dietary Guidelines could potentially include environmentally sustainable diet recommendations, which would accelerate the trend of diets higher in plant-based foods.
Meat and dairy; environmentally unsustainable.
The report specifies that “overall the estimated greater environmental benefits, including reduced projected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use, resulted from vegan, lacto-ovo vegetarian, and pesco-vegetarian diets, as well as .. Mediterranean-style dietary patterns.” All of these diets, especially vegan diets, emphasise primarily plant-based foods. These diets also had higher overall predicted health scores than the average diet patterns. Moreover, the high health scores of these dietary patterns were paralleled by high combined estimated sustainability scores.
American diets are notoriously low in vegetables, fruits and wholegrains while too high in calories, saturated fats, sodium, refined grains and added sugars where more than two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of youth are overweight or obese. Westernised diets, which have gained popularity in China, are contributing between 43-57% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Animal agriculture is also the leading cause of water, ocean and land pollution while driving deforestation across the globe to the point where even the Amazon rainforest has degraded to such a state where it can no longer regulate its own systems.
The DGAC found that “beef production required more land and irrigation water and produced more GHG emissions than dairy, poultry, pork, or eggs” while “as a standard comparator, staple plant foods had lower land use and GHG emissions than did dairy, poultry, pork, or eggs.”
Traditionally, the USDA advises Americans about healthy eating choices. However, with the time available to reverse climate change reaching crisis point paired with scientists confirming the Earth is in the Holocene extinction—the 6th mass extinction—event in its 4.5 billion year history, the inclusion of environmentally conscious food decisions is an absolute must.
50% of crops globally are fed to farmed animals.
Our global food system is calorie-inefficient due to more than 50% of crops being fed to farmed animals and is subsequently environmentally devastating. A person who follows a vegan diet produces the equivalent of 50% less carbon dioxide, uses 1/11th oil, 1/13th water, and 1/18th land compared to a meat-eater for their food.
For fossil fuel alone, one calorie from beef or milk requires 40 or 14 calories of fuel, respectively, whereas one calorie from grains can be obtained from 2.2 calories of fuel.
— Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.
The DGAC scientific report examined new scientific evidence relating to nutrition policy and programs. The critical framework provides for local, state and national health promotion and disease prevention, and this time, it includes a body of evidence regarding sustainable diets and the impact on our environment.
The 8th edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is due sometime in September this year—whether the recommendations of sustainable diets will be included is unknown.
Sources: Scientific Report for 2015 Dietary Guidelines PDF, Cowspiracy Facts.
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