Humanity has a huge food problem: Our eating habits are detrimental not only to the earth, but also the health. About three billion people are considered to be error-nourishes – at least 40 percent of the world’s population. And the gap is wide: While 820 million people do not have enough to eat, are much more, namely, about 2.2 billion people, are overweight or obese.
As a result of the global Obesity and the risk for cardiovascular diseases, Diabetes and cancer are rising. According to a study, Obesity was the cause of four million deaths worldwide in the year 2015.
At the same time, food production occupied about 40 percent of the land area in the world and consumes 70 percent of fresh water. It is also for 30 percent of the greenhouse effect, attributed to an international team of researchers in the journal “The Lancet”. A Commission made up of 37 experts from 16 countries, with the areas of nutrition, sustainability and the economy had worked over three years on the project.
Their message: The global agriculture and food must change radically, so that the health of the people improved and catastrophic damage to the earth can be avoided. The good news is that It is quite possible to feed by 2050 living on the earth ten billion people healthy, without destroying the nature. Humanity must make an effort, however, is solid – especially when it comes to food.
Problem Meat
“The diet of the world’s population needs to change drastically,” says one of the two chairmen of the Commission, Walter Willett of the Harvard University (USA). In the past 50 years, there have been a lot of progress in the fight against Hunger and poverty. However, the will made void by the consumption of too many calories, too much sugar and other unhealthy foods.
The researchers call for halving the consumption of foods such as beef and sugar. The amount of healthy food – especially fruit and vegetables – would have to double. Depending on the country, the extent of the necessary changes, fluctuations, the researchers emphasize.
You have a daily meal plan be developed, at the same time, health and the environment should:
- 7 grams of pork, and 7 grams of beef or lamb meat (the equivalent of about one-half of the meatballs)
- 29 grams of poultry (a chicken breast weighs often ten times)
- 28 grams of fish (fish sticks in about as heavy)
- 13 grams of eggs (roughly equivalent to one and a half eggs per week)
- 30 grams of added sugar (about six teaspoons)
- 550 grams of fruit and vegetables, but only 50 grams of starchy varieties (so, for example, a small potato)
- 230 grams whole grain products such as rice, wheat or Corn, and 125 grams of lentils, nuts and peas
- 250 grams of milk products (the equivalent of about one large glass of milk)
- 50 grams of Oils and fats
Of course, no one can eat per day exactly seven grams of beef. The Overview is rather intended to show that there is a Schnitzel for lunch and a salami sandwich for dinner is just too much.
The list is roughly equivalent to what is also recommend other experts in nutrition. According to the German society for nutrition also double the amount of meat, however, would be still healthy. It recommends between 300 and 600 grams per week. Currently, every German per week consumed an average of more than Double, to around 1.15 kg. More on the subject of meat, read here.
However, as the proposals can be anything in the world to prevail? The researchers will present five strategies:
1. Advertising for unhealthy foods will drastically restrict , and the food prices, the resulting environmental costs adjust. The demand is also other for a long time: “A farmer in the EU should only produce as many animals as he can feed through his country also,” says Simone Welte of the world hunger assistance, which was not involved in the study. This could reduce the production of “too much and too cheap meat”.
2. The quantity of food production is lost or thrown away, cut it in half. A citizen in Germany throws away, according to the Federal Ministry of food annually on average 55 kg of food. With the addition of the count of industry and large-scale enterprises, be it a total of eleven million tons of food waste per year. This will be avoided, could be saved in Germany every year, around 30 billion euros.
3. Crop yields increase, for example, with drought-resistant crops or better irrigation.
4. Not even more natural in arable land convert. In ten per cent of the sea areas, the fishing should be also prohibited, so that the animals can regenerate.
5. Small and medium-sized enterprises better supported. Environmentalists have been asking for this for a Long time. The Green-close to Heinrich-Böll-Foundation and the environmental organization BUND criticize in your recently submitted to “Agricultural Atlas”, primarily due to the land premium to approximately 80 percent of the EU Agricultural funds went to only 20 percent of the farms.
However, the proposed strategies are also useful? “The study is very comprehensive with your view on diet, climate, and biodiversity,” says Franziska schuenemann from the Institute for world economy in Kiel, which was not involved in the study. The team of researchers offer little new approaches, have shown the many aspects of the theme but well-bundled and easy.
Paternalism “Veggie Day”
The researcher questioned also due to the fact that people can educate other diet. “Nutrition is a very, very emotional thing,” said Schünemann. So it was a good recommendation by the authors, the advertisements for unhealthy food and restrict their marketing. “This would, however, likely to call forth strong resistance from the food industry,” says Schünemann and called for more examples. “In Germany, the idea of a “Veggie Days was felt to be” in canteens already as paternalism. Even harder is the introduction of taxes on certain foods in the free market economy of the United States, whose citizens place a high value on independence.”
Summarized: agriculture and food must change radically, so that the health of the people calls for improved and catastrophic damage to the earth can be avoided, an international team of researchers. This could only be achieved, if the consumption of certain foods, significantly reduced – particularly from meat. Whose production is particularly energy intensive, and an excessive consumption favors diseases.