In addition to lowering your risk of disease, a healthier diet improves our food system’s sustainability. But eating healthier also has indirect effects that can have unanticipated negative effects on the economy, society, and environment. A global economic model was used by Wageningen University & Research to investigate a global shift toward the EAT-Lancet diet. Nature Food is the journal where their findings were published.
Adhering to this diet will assist with decreasing worldwide interest in food and related biomass creation. Consuming fewer calories reduces the environmental impact of our food systems and the use of resources, especially in richer nations. However, there’s a catch. A diet that is healthier and more sustainable can actually be undermined by so-called side effects or indirect effects.
Effects on the economy
How does this work? For a start, you can see that assuming that you want less food, you likewise need less biomass, which brings down the normal costs of biomass and land. A decrease in the cost of land makes it more appealing to utilize additional land and expand agricultural areas, thereby lowering fertilizer consumption and emissions. On the other hand, there is less of a need for labor and capital, which results in lower incomes and wages.
In low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where hunger persists, these effects work in the opposite direction. In this instance, switching to the EAT-Lancet diet actually results in an increase in the need for food and biomass. Prices rise as a result of the increased use of land. Instead, more work is being done in agriculture. The intensification of agriculture has both positive and negative effects, such as an increase in chemical inputs.
Effects on the environment outside of the food system
Another effect can be seen in sectors other than food. Here, eating a healthier diet increases emissions of greenhouse gases. How does it function? People spend more on non-food goods when they spend less on food, especially in higher-income areas. This may result in increased non-food product production and demand.
The reduction in biomass emissions caused by eating less is insufficient to offset the additional emissions from non-food production. Due to this effect, global emissions of greenhouse gases will remain at the same level in 2030 as they were in the absence of dietary changes. As a result, climate progress in agriculture is cancelled out by indirect effects in the non-food sector.
Social side effects
Social effects on wages in the agricultural and non-farm sectors can be affected differently by changes in global food demand. When there is less demand for agricultural goods, wages in agriculture are lower than in other industries. This is due to the fact that agricultural skills are not always comparable to those needed in other industries. Workers in agriculture are compelled to remain in the industry despite lower pay because they are unable to easily switch careers. Higher wages in non-farm sectors are also encouraged by the expansion of non-food production. In most regions, the existing income disparity between agricultural workers and non-farm workers is made worse by the shift in eating habits.
The cost of food is directly affected by wage fluctuations. Healthy foods based on the EAT-Lancet nutrition guidelines become more affordable for people in both the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in regions with higher incomes. Even though agricultural sector wages are falling, food prices are falling even more, making healthy food more affordable.
The effect on affordability is reversed in low-income regions where the EAT-Lancet diet increases demand for food because food prices rise faster than wages. Food prices are rising for both agricultural and non-agricultural workers in sub-Saharan Africa. This is concerning due to the persistently high rate of hunger in this region.
Side effects and food waste
The switch to the EAT-Lancet diet helps reduce food loss and waste in addition to having an effect on land use and greenhouse gas emissions. This is because there is less food produced and less food traded. However, it should be noted that consumption patterns in high-income nations continue to significantly contribute to food losses and waste in lower- and middle-income countries. In addition to putting pressure on the local environment, this makes it difficult to reuse food losses in less developed regions due to a lack of infrastructure and technological resources.
Reduced food loss and waste, on the one hand, means that less food and nutrients are lost, which is good. However, increasing the amount of fresh, plant-based food waste can also increase pollution. The expected environmental benefits of the EAT-Lancet diet’s reduced food loss and waste may be diminished by the geographical disparity between where food waste is produced and where recycling facilities are located.
The EAT-Lancet diet, for example, is a healthier and more environmentally friendly way to eat, but there are also potential negative effects on the economy, society, and environment that should be taken into consideration. When designing policy interventions, modeling studies like this one help take this complexity into account. For integrated solutions that bring us closer to a more sustainable future in which the pursuit of health, equity, and environmental protection are mutually reinforcing, it is necessary to combine various interventions within and outside the agricultural sector.
More information: Alessandro Gatto et al, Economic, social and environmental spillovers decrease the benefits of a global dietary shift, Nature Food (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-023-00769-y
