The way we produce our food matters, says the IPCC, and dietary choices can help reduce emissions and pressure on land. Photo / 123RF
COMMENT:
If there's an overarching theme to the healthy eating landscape this year, it's the convergence of health and sustainability. Where these used to be two separate conversations relating to food, now they are one and the same. The health of the planet and the health of the people on
it are being considered together.
This is really good news. There are no healthy people on a ravaged planet. As a report in the Lancet earlier this year pointed out, we can't consider the issues of obesity, undernutrition and climate change separately any more, since they each impact on each other. We are in the midst of what the authors called a "global syndemic", and to tackle it we need to think of these issues as one whole picture.
This has been echoed by the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on climate change and land. Land is a critical resource, the report said, increasingly under pressure from climate change. And, of course, the use of land to grow food is a contributor to climate change as well. They each influence the other, and it all adds up to problems for humans: food insecurity; undernutrition; poor health.
This report, as with the others, emphasises the need to change both what we eat and how we produce our food on a global scale. If we don't, comes the warning: we might not be able to feed everyone. The way we produce our food matters, says the IPCC, and dietary choices can help reduce emissions and pressure on land.
