Association of dietary pattern and greenhouse gas emission with human health

The impact of changes in human dietary patterns on the environment and human health is becoming more obvious. The changes in human dietary patterns not only exacerbate climate change, but also lead to an increase in global incidence of chronic diseases. In comparison to plant-based foods, animal-based foods could result in higher green house gas emissions (GHGE). The animal-based foods inducing the highest GHGE is ruminant meats (beef and lamb). The western dietary pattern was found to be associated with an increased risk of dyslipidaemia, diabetes, metabolic syndrome (MetS), high body mass index (BMI), and hypertension. Compared to those in the populations with conventional omnivorous diet, a 16 % – 41 % decreased incidence of type II diabetes, 7 % – 13 % decreased incidence of cancer, 20 % – 26 % decreased mortality of coronary heart diseases, and 0 % – 18 % decreased overall mortality were observed in the populations with vegetarian diet, the Mediterranean diet, and the fish-vegetarian diet. Contrasted to current diet pattern, the healthy diet pattern might be associated with a 15 % average decrease in GHGE; while the sustainable diet pattern might be associated with a 27 % average decrease in GHGE. Therefore, focusing only on healthy diet pattern could not reduce diet pattern-related average GHGE substantially, suggesting that new dietary guideline needs to be established in the view of the impact of dietary pattern on environment. Reducing meat products consumption is an efficient strategy to cope with climate change for both developed countries and the transitional countries, including China, with rapidly expanding of the consumption. But the demand for meat products has been increased continuously due to population growth in developing countries and restrictive or monotonous plant-based dietary pattern may result in nutrient deficiencies with deleterious effects on health, which would make it below the internationally-agreed limit of 2 ℃ for climate warming in Paris Agreement.