World lacks enough
plants for healthy diet
Tim Radford
Climate News Network
Guidelines for a healthy diet emphasise fresh fruit and vegetables. Right now, there
may not be enough in the gardens to nourish a cooler, healthier world.
C
anadian scientists have confirmed once
again that a healthy diet is the best way
to help contain global warming and
feed 9.8 billion people by 2050. And
that involves, among other things, a global
shift away from meat-eating and towards
consuming plants instead. Canada.
But they have also done the sums and
identified a problem: the world just does not
produce enough of the fruits and vegetables
that are at the heart of nutritional health
guidelines almost everywhere. “The only way to eat a nutritionally
balanced diet, save land and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions is to
consume and produce more fruits
and vegetables”
“We simply can’t all adopt a healthy diet
under the current global agricultural system,”
said Evan Fraser, a researcher in global food
security at the University of Guelph in Ontario,
AgriKultuur |AgriCulture
“Results show that the global system currently
overproduces grains, fats and sugars, while
production of fruit and vegetables and, to a
smaller degree, protein is not sufficient to
meet the nutritional needs of the current
population.”
It has become an axiom of climate science
that the clearing of wilderness to create more
pasture and fodder crops for livestock can
38