A common
link between climate change and health：Food
Vegan Union
of Physicians (醫界蔬食聯盟)
July 2014
According to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the IPCC on Climate Change(1), the biggest
source of global greenhouse gas emission is agriculture（food
production）which account for more
than one-third of all global greenhouse gas（GHG）emissions(2) (Figure
1), including livestock industry accounted for approximately 18% of
human-induced GHG(3). Therefore, the FAO report in 2013 claims that
we cannot ignore the potential effect of our daily food for mitigation of
climate change(4).
In addition, based on the IPCC
report in 2014, the global crop yield may drop 2% every 10 years due to climate
change, while global food demand is expected to rise 14% every 10 years because
of population growth(5). This shortage of food including water will certainly
make the current situation of starvation and malnutrition worse and even cause
conflicts within societies and between countries, because hunger breeds
discontentment. The effects of food shortage are multiple including
health and social impacts
(Figure 1).
The relationship between food and
health is also multifaceted. Food not only provide nutrition, but also affect
our health status through changing intestinal microbiota, modulating gene
expression, and influencing common cancers(6), ect. (Figure 1).
Healthy food would provide more healthy nutrition (Figure 2) with less harmful
ingredients(7,8,9,10), increase good probiotics in the intestine(11,12,13),
modulate healthful gene expression (14) including lengthening the
telomere(15), prevent and cure chronic diseases(16) and
common cancers (Table 1), even stop epidemics of zoonotic diseases (Table 1). Food,
thus, is a common link between climate change and health.
Furthermore,
the 2010 report by the International Panel for
Sustainable Resource Management of the UNEP concludes that the global shift to a vegan diet without
meat, egg & milk is necessary to rescue our world from the worst impact of
climate change, hunger and energy shortage, because the
Western diet containing meat and milk products is not sustainable (17)! In fact, the
ecological footprints of plant-based diets are much more sustainable than
animal food(18) (Table 2). Convincing evidences
have also shown that vegetarian dietary patterns make people living longer and
healthy (Table 3). Therefore, plant-based diets are both sustainable and healthful
and can be defined as sustainable food.
Sustainable food consumption can reduce greenhouse
gas emission to gain more time for our adaptation to climate change. During the era of climate change, people have to make dietary adaptation
in order to promote our health while decreasing chronic diseases and cancers
which in turn can improve our tolerance to high temperature variability(19),
and avoid social conflicts.
As
medical professionals, we are duty-bound to need to promote sustainable food, because
sustainable
food is good for both climate change and human health (Figure 2). After all, healthy living (20) is the best
revenge for climate change.
References:
1.
The
Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC
AR4).
2. Agriculture and the climate change negotiations: an FAO perspective. Proceedings
of the Symposium on Mitigation Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Animal Production.
2009/5.
3.
Food and Agriculture
Organization. Livestock’s long shadow–Environmental issues and
options. 2006.
4.
Food and Agriculture
Organization. Tackling
climate change through livestock: A global assessment of emissions and
mitigation opportunities. 2013.
5.
The
Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC
AR5) Climate
Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.
6.
Grant
W. A multicountry ecological study of cancer incidence rates in 2008 with
respect to various risk-modifying factors. Nutrients 2014;6:163-189.
7.
Zeneng Wang, Elizabeth Klipfell, Brian J. Bennett, et al.
Gut flora metabolism
of phosphatidylcholine promotes cardiovascular disease. Nature 2011; 472: 57-63.
8.
K. Rak, D. J. Rader. Cardiovascular disease: The
diet-microbe morbid union. Nature 2011;472(7341):
40–41.
9.
Koeth RA, Wang Z, Levison BS,
et al. Intestinal microbiota metabolism of l-carnitine, a nutrient in red meat,
promotes atherosclerosis. Nat Med
2013;19(5): 567-585. doi:10.1038/nm.3145.
10. Tang WHW, Wang Z, Levison BS, et al. Intestinal microbial
metabolism of phosphatidylcholine and cardiovascular risk. N Engl J Med 2013;368: 1575-84. doi:
10.1056/NEJMoa1109400
11. Wu GD, Chen J, Hoffmann C, Bittinger K, Chen YY,
Keilbaugh SA,et al. Linking Long-Term Dietary Patterns with Gut Microbial
Enterotypes. Science 2011; 334: 106-108.
12. David LA, Maurice CF, Carmody RN, et al. Diet rapidly
and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome. Nature 2014;505: 559-563. doi:10.1038/nature12820
13.
Kim
MS, Hwang SS , Park EJ, Bae JW. Strict vegetarian diet improves the risk
factors associated with metabolic diseases by modulating gut microbiota and
reducing intestinal inflammation. Environ Microbiol Rep. 2013;5: 765-775.
14.
Ornish D, Magbanua MJM, Weidner G, et al. Changes in
prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle
intervention. PNAS 2008;105(24):
8369-8374.
15.
Ornish
D, Lin J, Chan JM, et al. Effect of comprehensive lifestyle changes on
telomerase activity and telomere length in men with biopsy-proven low-risk
prostate cancer: 5-year follow-up of a descriptive pilot study. Lancet
Oncol. 17 September 2013. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(13)70366-8
16. Esselstyn CB Jr., Gendy G, Doyle J, Golubic M, Roizen MF.
A way to reverse CAD? J Fam Pract. 2014;63: 356-364b.
17. International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, UNEP.
Assessing the environmental impacts of consumption and production Priority
Products and Materials. 2010/6 http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/Portals/24102/PDFs/
PriorityProductsAndMaterials_Report.pdf
18. Pimentel D, Pimentel M. Sustainability of meat-based and
plant-based diets and the environment. Am
J Clin Nutr 2003;78: 660s-663S.
19. Zanobettia A, O’Neillb MS, Gronlundb CJ, & Schwartza
JD. Summer temperature variability and long-term survival among elderly people
with chronic disease. PNAS 2012. doi:10.1073/pnas.1113070109
20. Ford ES, Bergmann MM, Kro¨ ger J, Schienkiewitz A,
Weikert C, Boeing H. Healthy living is the best revenge: findings from the
European Prospective
Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition-Potsdam study. Arch
Intern Med 2009; 169(15): 1355-1362.
