Our food system is failing us. Right now, nearly 700 million people are going hungry, nearly 2 billion are overweight and the pressure we're putting on the environment to produce certain types of food means we're losing nature at a catastrophic rate.
Changing land use for food production is the biggest driver of nature loss. About 50% of the world’s habitable land area is already used for agriculture – for livestock such as cattle and pigs and for crops that feed both people and livestock.
It’s easy to feel like we’ve gone way past the point of no return and that there is nothing we can do now to fix this.
But the good news is there’s still time ⌛
The even better news is that one of the most impactful (and easy!) things you can do will not only help make the planet healthier and create a more equal food system, it’ll also help make you healthier! An absolute win-win!
What is that thing? Well, it’s eating a more Planet-Based diet. And no, we haven’t typed that wrong! So, what is a planet-based meal/diet?
How to get started with your Planet-Based Diet
A Planet-Based Diet is a new way to approach eating
It delivers huge health benefits (including reducing your chances of developing things like diabetes and cardiovascular disease and increasing your life expectancy) while having a minimal impact on the environment, meaning a more stable climate, more wildlife, more space for biodiversity to thrive, and cleaner water.
And, importantly, it's flexible to the different needs of different people, cultures and traditions around the world, meaning that it is something we can all strive for!
To make it easy for you to get started, we’ve identified the top 4 things you can do to eat a more sustainable Planet-Based Diet:
- Choose sustainable ingredients 🐟
- Eat more plants, less animals 🍓
- Choose healthy and minimally processed foods 🍌
- Ensure balance and a wide variety 🍇🍉🌽🍐😋
Find out more about what these steps mean.
And we’ve also created this tool for you to use to work out how to build a planet-based diet that best suits your needs. The tool allows you to see how tweaks to your diet impact our planet - simply use the sliders to increase or decrease your intake of a particular food group.
Give building you very own #PlanetBasedDiet a go now! 👇
The impact of a Planet-Based diet
If each of us adopted a planet-based diet, we could help reverse nature loss, halt deforestation, create a more stable climate, cut water waste and ensure everyone in the world has enough healthy and nutritious food.
We could reduce:
- Food-based greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30%
- Food-based biodiversity loss by up to 46%
- Agricultural land-use by at least 40%
- Premature mortality rates by at least 20%
Yup, all that can be achieved by making a few changes to the meals you eat! Sounds good right?!
Changing what we eat is one of the easiest ways we can create a more sustainable future for everyone. The power is truly on our plates.
