I want to tell you a tale of two diets.
Both were reported in the same newspaper (The Times) within a week of each other.
And they say a lot about the age we are living in.
One gives us good reason to despair…
The other, thankfully, may offer us a glimmer of hope.
Let’s start with the optimistic one, to ease us in gently.
Eco-Friendly Diet Cuts Death Risk By a Third
About five years ago, The Lancet published ‘the planetary health diet’.
It was designed to combat the effects of industrial scale agriculture and meat farming on the environment, to help protect planet Earth’s fragile natural ecosystems.
But it also had in mind the long-term health of human beings.
Instead of dogmatically insisting on veganism or even vegetarianism, it suggested a flexitarian approach, where we could eat meat and fish, as long as over HALF of what we consumed was in the form of whole fruits and vegetables.
The diet aimed to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and support optimal development in children.
At the same time, it sought to minimise the environmental impact of food production, including greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, water use, and land use.
The focus was on the regular consumption of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes… with moderate amounts of fish, poultry, and dairy.
On top of that, it encouraged the low consumption of red meat, processed foods, and added sugars.
Here were some of the recommendations.
· Vegetables: 300 grams per day
· Fruit: 200 grams per day
· Whole grains: 232 grams per day
· Dairy: 250 grams per day
· Protein: 100 grams of plant-based proteins (e.g., beans, lentils) and around 28 grams of red meat, 58 grams of chicken, and 13 grams of eggs per day.
· Fish: 28 grams per day
· Fats: Mainly unsaturated fats, with about 50 grams of oils like olive oil and 40 grams of nuts per day.
· Sugars: Less than 31 grams per day.
The diet’s flexibility meant that it could be adapted by various cultures and regions across the globe – and also be adapted to people’s individual tastes.
Recently, the effects of this diet (over half a decade) have been assessed in a large-scale analysis of 206,000 healthy people in the USA who followed it.
The study found that 10% of those who most closely stuck to the planetary health diet had almost a THIRD lower risk of premature death than those in the bottom 10%.
The diet of those 10% also created 29% lower greenhouse gas emissions and used 21% less fertiliser.
For me, this is an encouraging story.
It might be too big an ask for the world to suddenly go vegan to protect the earth, but this kind of flexitarian diet seems to me utterly feasible.
If we were all to switch to this diet, our societies would be healthier and pressure would be taken off our health services.
We’d reduce greenhouse gas by almost a third and we’d use a fifth of the fertilisers.
Anyway, I’m especially please to read it because it’s pretty much the diet that I eat.
Far better than this next story….
Our second dietary tale is a lot darker.
If anything, it’s a nightmare.
Why Cancer Rates in the Under 50s Are Soaring
Last month, UK based research showed that cancer rates are rising twice as quickly for the under 50s as they are for the over-50s.
The suggestion is that these cancers are linked to bad gut bacteria, and chronic inflammation caused by diet.
This diet, suggest experts, is one that has radically shifted over the past 30-40 years. It has seen an explosion in ready meals, junk food, ultra-processed food and artificial sweeteners.
It has also seen the widespread use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and microplastics, on foods transported across huge distances and kept on supermarket shelves for long periods.
In particular, the younger generations are suffering the effects of this because they’ve grown up knowing nothing else!
From cradle to (early) grave, they exist in the world of fake foods, chemical creations and constant bombardment with marketing for unhealthy treats,
It seems that the worst effects are in the microbiome.
The Times reported: “Patients with early-onset bowel cancer were found to have more harmful gut bacteria, linked to poor diets and highly processed foods. These bacteria can cause chronic inflammation or DNA mutations, leading to tumours.”
So there we have it…
On the one hand, a diet that can reduce the human impact on the earth’s biosphere, and cut the risk of early death by nearly a third.
On the other, the diet MOST younger people eat nowadays, which requires huge amounts of industrial pollution and the use of more land…. and which is DOUBLING the rise in cancer rates for under 50s.
I know which nutritional direction I would like the world to go in.
But can we possibly achieve this as a society…. or will always be battling vested interests who want to keep the wheels of industry turning at any cost?
As always, I’d be interested in your opinion.
For A Healthier Balance of Good Gut Bacteria…
Finally, today, if you want help maintaining healthy gut bacteria, check out Together’s fermented food multibiotic, which comes from 45 farm-grown fruits and vegetables.
They are fermented in a symbiotic co-culture of 11 strains of live bacteria, yeasts, and acetic acid bacteria, to help improve your microbiome health.