ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

To read the full abstract: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2017:201711889

Changing your diet can improve both your health and the environment. This study shows that the national dietary recommendations to reduce intakes of animal products can reduce environmental impacts in most high-income nations. We all recommended diets to our patients, and nations recommend diets to their populations. But what is the environmental impact of a diet? Food production accounts for 19-29% of greenhouse gas emissions and increase as the world’s population grow. Yet, it is subject to individual dietary choices. This study compares the environmental impacts of average dietary intakes and a nation-specific recommended diet across 37 middle- and high-income nations. The study shows that choosing to follow national recommendations over the average national diet would have the biggest environmental savings in the United States, Australia, Brazil, and Canada. Most of these savings are due to reductions of meat intakes. There are reductions also in most EU nations, with Greece, Ireland, and the Netherlands saving the most. In upper-middle–income nations, a smaller positive impact was observed, and in lower-middle–income nations they found increase in greenhouse gases and land use and derangement of soil quality because guidelines in these nations emphasize a higher consumption of animal products to combat low levels of protein in the diet. Further benefits on the environment can be achieved with recommendations to decrease dietary meat and dairy products. Thus, in well-off countries, adopting national recommendation is good for the environment, but recommendations need to be tailored to a country’s unique environment and economy. These principles have been successfully applied with the Nordic and Mediterranean recommendations. Other than changing your diet to be more healthy and ethical, we have one more reason to change, for our environment.