Western diets must be abandoned for vegetarianism or greenhouse gases will rise by 80%, experts warn

The medical journals are full of findings that red meat is bad for you.  Yet never before have Americans eaten more of it and never before have Americans lived so long.  So what gives?

Before I answer that, let me mention another fact:  Australians  are big meat eaters too and yet the life expectancy of Australians is up there along with Japan and the Scandinavian countries.  In some reckonings, the Australian life expectancy is the longest of any national population.  And what is behind that statistic?  Nonagenarians.  There are an incredible number of people aged over 90 tottering around in Australia.  Most families include or have recently included one among their close relatives.

So what food did those nonagenerians grow up on?  They grew up on a traditional British diet and still mostly eat that to this day.  It sounds (and was) unbelievably boring but every night they would sit down to fried meat of some sort, often steak.  And it would be fried in dripping -- i.e. beef fat --  and accompanied by boiled vegetables.  Lifespan is the ultimate test of any diet so plenty of beef and fat therefore stands thoroughly vindicated as a healthy diet.

So what are the medical journals blathering about?  The studies they rely on are epidemiological.  They report correlations of uncertain meaning  -- so the authors simply leap on the interpretation  that they like -- without proof.  I know of no double blind controlled study which shows significant ill-effects on lifespan from eating red meat.  Ancel Keys was the first to claim ill effects and his studies were very broadly epidemiological indeed.

So why do many medical researchers want to find that red meat is bad for you?  Elitism, Hubris.  They know they are smart and are sufficiently weak in character that they want to announce that far and wide. The humility preached by Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 is not for them.  And one way they can announce their superiority is by mocking and scorning anything that is popular.  And red meat is VERY popular.

And the Green/Left too are elitists.  They think they are so superior that they can and should tell the rest of us what to do and are prepared to use force to bring that about wherever they can.

So the article below is just another superiority claim

One notes that they have also slipped into their story one of the scarcity warnings that they so love.  According to the Green/Left, there is always something that we are in danger of running out of. Their claim that in future we may not have enough food for  everyone is as old as Thomas Malthus and Adolf Hitler's
Lebensraum

The fact of course is that the whole trend in agricultural and other primary production has been towards greater abundance, even  food surpluses, which is why food has never been as cheap as it is now.  The Green/Left prefer theory to facts



A love of meat and sugary treats could be damaging the planet, as well as your health.

By 2050, experts predict that these so-called western diets, which are typically high in fats and oils, will cause greenhouse gas emissions to increase by 80 per cent.

If left unchecked, this could also lead to an extra billion hectares of habitat being destroyed to make way for the extra land needed for food production and agriculture.

‘Rising incomes and urbanisation are driving a global dietary transition in which traditional diets are replaced by diets higher in refined sugars, refined fats, oils and meats,’ explained ecologists Professor David Tilman and graduate student Matthew Clark from the University of Minnesota.

‘By 2050, these dietary trends will be a major contributor to an estimated 80 per cent increase in global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from food production and to global land clearing.’

The researchers said these dietary shifts are also greatly increasing the number of cases of Type II diabetes, coronary heart disease and other chronic diseases that lower global life expectancies.

Their study, published in the journal Nature, analysed data on environmental costs of food production, diet trends, relationships between diet and health and population growth.

Between 1961 and 2009, the pair discovered that consumption of meat and calories per person rose in tandem with income.

Combining this with forecasts of population and income growth for the coming decades, the researchers showed diets in 2050 would contain fewer servings of fruits and vegetables, but 25 to 50 percent more pork, poultry, beef, dairy and eggs.

The study also used a computer model to see how changing from an omnivore diet to a typical Mediterranean, pescatarian or vegetarian alternative could make a difference.

Their {model] results show that these alternatives have the potential to reduce incidences of Type II diabetes by, on average, 27 per cent, cancer by about 10 per cent and heart disease deaths by about 20 per cent.

‘Alternative diets that offer substantial health benefits could, if widely adopted, reduce global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, reduce land clearing and resultant species extinctions, and help prevent such diet-related chronic non-communicable diseases.

‘In particular, if the world were to adopt variations on three common diets health would be greatly increased at the same time global greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by an amount equal to the current greenhouse gas emissions of all cars, trucks, plans trains and ships.

‘This dietary shift would prevent the destruction of an area of tropical forests and savannas as large as half of the United States.’

The results back up the findings of a previous study from the University of Cambridge and University of Aberdeen that said eating less meat is 'essential' to ensure future demand for food can be met and 'dangerous' climate change avoided.

The study found food production alone could exceed targets for greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 if current trends continue.

Population growth and the global shift towards 'meat-heavy Western diets' has meant increasing agricultural yields will not meet projected food demands for an expected 9.6 billion world population in 30 years, according to the researchers

SOURCE

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them