Preventive medicine expert advocates a plant-based diet
- Abstract
In a letter to JAMA, the preventive-medicine expert addresses the failure of the newest USDA Dietary Guidelines to articulate the health and climate benefits of a low-meat diet.Eating meat is bad for our health and bad for our planet, according to Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Studies show that vegetarians and vegans have lower rates of heart disease and cancer, and that nearly 15 percent of all planet-warming greenhouse gases comes from raising cattle, pigs, poultry and other animals. The upshot is that the estimated greenhouse gas emissions of a vegetarian diet are half those of a meat-based diet. To improve public health and combat climate change, China recently released national dietary guidelines whose goal is to cut national meat consumption in half by 2030.
- Resource Type
- Blog Post
- Author
- Medical Xpress
- Date
- July 13, 2016
- Organization Type
- News
- Health and Human Impact
- Food security
- Climate and Environmental Impact
- Food/crops
- Emission Source
- Agriculture/forestry
- Solutions
- Behavior change Sustainable agriculture/local food systems
- Other
- Co-benefits/co-harms