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Thursday, October 31st, 2019

Is A Diet That’s Healthy For Us Also Better For The Planet? Most Of The Time, Yes

Author:     MARIA GODOY
Source:     npr
Publication Date:     October 28, 20195:42 PM ET
 Link: Is A Diet That’s Healthy For Us Also Better For The Planet? Most Of The Time, Yes
Stephan:   Recently, after speaking at a conference in Ft. Collins, Colorado put on by Stephanie James, I sat in the Denver airport for two hours waiting for my flight home. It was very revealing. A minor observation: very few men today wear shoes that have to be polished, perhaps 1%. A major observation: I was stunned once again by how many Americans are obese. As I watched these enormous humans walk through the Delta terminal I looked up the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. This is what I found: For 2015-2016 in the U.S., 39.8% of adults aged 20 and over were obese (including 7.6% with severe obesity) and that another 31.8% were overweight. Obesity rates have increased for all population groups in the United States over the last several decades. This is not just a matter of personal poor health, it also has significant implications for the planet itself, as this report describes.

Credit: MirageC/Getty

Consider the almond.

Almonds and other nuts are often touted as healthy snacks, because they can help you maintain a healthy weight and are linked to a lower risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

But almonds are grown in drought-stricken California, and the amount of water required to produce them has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. So if you’re an environmentally minded eater who also wants to embrace a healthy diet, are almonds a responsibly green snack?

Relatively speaking, yes, says ecologist David Tilman of the University of Minnesota.

In a vast new analysis published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Tilman and his co-authors looked at the health and environmental impacts of 15 different food groups, including nuts, fruits, vegetables, red meat, dairy, eggs, fish, olive oil, legumes and sugar-sweetened beverages.

The foods were ranked relative to one another based on how they influence the risk of disease and the toll they take on the planet in terms of water and land use, greenhouse gas emissions and how they impact pollution of […]

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