DR MICHAEL
ELSTEIN
is a Sydney-based
anti-ageing physician
and writer. He is the
author of three books,
including his latest,
The Wellness Guide to
Preventing the Diseases
of Ageing. He has also
designed the app
The diet guide to
ageing prevention.Eating to save the planet
The EAT-Lancet
Commission
recommends
the increased
replacement of
animal-sourced
foods with
those that are
plant-based.W
e are hurtling towards planetary
devastation at such a rapid rate that
unless we significantly alter our daily
habits we may witness climate change
so devastating our lives will become unbearable. Our
health and that of the planet will be under threat.
Such is the prediction of journalist David
Wallace-Wells. In the summer of 2019, in
collaboration with preeminent climate scientists,
Wallace-Wells released a jaw-dropping, deeply
disturbing description of the apocalypse we might
all be facing in The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story
of the Future, a prognosis that might reach a
meteorologist’s report near you much sooner than
even this spine-tingling analysis anticipates.
If carbon emissions, climate change and
global warming proceed at the current rate, by the
year 2050 half of the world’s population would be
dealing with malaria. The mosquito-borne disease,
currently restricted to tropical and subtropical
climates, will migrate to far reaches of the planet
as warming becomes sustained and ubiquitous.
For every one-degree increase in temperature, the
parasite reproduces 10 times faster, which means
that the mosquitoes spreading this illness might
be swirling around our bedrooms in squadrons.
Zika and dengue infestations will become diseases
that plague all of us.
We take the air we breathe for granted but stop
for a second to consider that the oxygen we need
to survive is provided by plants that appropriate
the CO 2 we emit in exchange for the vital oxygen
that sustains our lives. The Amazon provides 20
per cent of our oxygen and yet current government
intervention has legalised economic expansion into
this pristine environment while wildfires that are
becoming increasingly frequent could ravage huge
swathes of this life-preserving ecosystem.
This would be disastrous for all the oxygen-
dependant inhabitants of our planet.
Wallace-Wells is hardly buoyed by
the steps we are taking to circumvent
this impending disaster. The USA has
opted out of the Paris climate accord,
an internationally binding agreement
that proposed to limit carbon
emissions and hold its signatories
accountable for embracing renewable
energy resources and reducing their
dependence on fossil fuels.
A carbon tax introduced in Australia and
attempts in France, for example, to tax petrol
consumption met with resounding denunciation by
the public in both countries. Governmental inertia,
mirrored by a distinct lack of societal enthusiasm
to commit to a path that would significantly alter
the current destructive trajectory spawned by
man-made global warming, suggests we are on
a collision course with the wrath of nature yet few
of us care about it.
Mercifully, scientific will to interrupt this
planetary train ride into the bowels of Hell has
spawned an initiative which might yet be our
salvation. Realising that global warming, at leastin part, may be due to our eating habits and food
production technologies, research has focused on
what all of us can do to change these patterns.
Enter the EAT-Lancet Commission, a three-
year project that brought together 37 experts
from 16 countries with expertise in health,
nutrition, environmental sustainability, food
systems, economics and political governance.
The commission was briefed to provide
clear guidelines for healthy eating practices
and sustainable food production that would
substantially reduce the carbon footprint of
these processes while also diminishing diseases
generated by an unhealthy diet.Plant-based foods
The fundamental findings of this commission were
twofold. Firstly, our attachment to animal-based
protein derived primarily from ruminant livestock
such as cows and sheep leads to the release of
methane produced during digestion. Allied with this
is the fact that, in order to provide a home for these
animals where their maturity can be accelerated
in order to rush them to the slaughter, expansive
stretches of pasture are needed.
To preserve these pastures, soil fertility
management and fertiliser need to be applied,
which in turn leads to the generation of nitrous
oxide. Methane and nitrous oxide respectively
have 56 times and 280 times the global warming
potential (over 20 years) of carbon dioxide.
Reversing this trend is simple — all we have to
do is eat differently.
The commission recommends the increased
replacement of animal-sourced foods with those
that are plant-based. If this were to happen on
a global scale, the release of methane and nitrous
oxide gases would dramatically decline, mitigating
their contribution to global warming. Instead of
getting protein from livestock, we would need to
obtain this critical resource from legumes, beans,
peas, lentils, nuts and soy-based foods. We’d still be
eating pork, chicken and other sources of poultry,
fish and eggs, just much less so as we realign our
preferences to a vegetarian pattern of eating.
Just how to advocate and implement this on
a worldwide scale has yet to be determined.
Certainly, the practicalities of adopting this
fundamental change in our eating behaviour are
daunting as poorer countries achieve economic
advancement and start to embrace the eating
practices of richer countries by consuming more
red meat, fat and sugar, the very activities the
commission proposes we abort.
Essentially, we alter what we eat out of necessity
and for personal reasons, mostly because we want
to lose weight or in some rare cases in the hope
that this will help us live longer, more productive
lives. It’s hardly enjoyable, which is why it’s almost
never sustainable and I can’t think of a time when
it’s done for altruistic reasons. If no one cares about
driving their car, good luck to the health authorities
for trying to convince them they have to eat plants
and beans to save the planet. Photography^ GettyImagescolumn
AGEING WELL148 | wellbeing.com.au