New study results show that a tiny change in the daily menu as a change in diet is healthy and at the same timebe beneficial for the environmentcan. According to the researchers, eating one hot dog could cost 36 minutes of healthy life. However, choosing to eat a serving of nuts instead would gain an additional 26 minutes of life as an alternative to junk food.
Why a targeted change in diet is healthy and has many benefits
The recently published study evaluated more than 5,800 foods. The scientists ranked these according to their burden of diet-related diseases on humans and their impact on the environment. It also turned out that the replacement of 10% of thedaily calorie intakefrom beef and processed meat through a mixture of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and selected seafood reduce the carbon footprint through the diet by a third. So this could allow people to gain a full 48 healthy minutes per day. In the research, the authors used 15 estimates of nutritional risk factors and disease burden. They combined these with the nutritional profiles of the most commonly consumed foods. Foods with positive values contribute to healthy minutes of life, while foods with negative values have health consequences that can adversely affect human health.
Finally, the researchers classified foods into three color zones: green, yellow and red, based on their combined nutritional and environmental performance, similar to a traffic light. The green zone represents foods that are both nutritionally beneficial and have a low environmental impact. The diet in this zone consists primarily of nuts, fruits, field vegetables, legumes, whole grains and some seafood. The red zone includes foods that have either significant nutritional or environmental impacts. Such impacts, such as climate change, have arisen primarily from processed beef consumed. The researchers admit that the range of all indicators varies significantly. They also point out that nutritionally beneficial foods do not always have the lowest environmental impact and vice versa.This studyshows that small targeted substitutions offer a viable and effective strategy to achieve significant health and environmental benefits without the need for dramatic dietary changes.
