Gigantic study reveals the healthiest foods are the most sustainable – Inverse

It turns out the foods that damage the earth and our bodies are the same.

The worst offenders? Unprocessed and processed red meat, which had the strongest association with heightened risk of mortality, type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Producing red meat was also ten to 100 times worse for the environment than producing plant-sourced foods due to greenhouse gas emissions, land use, acidification, and eutrophication.

Consuming sugar-sweetened beverages, like soda and fruit juice, were also terrible for your health, but surprisingly, had very low environmental costs.

Adding an extra serving of dairy products, eggs, or chicken was not associated with upping or lowering disease risk. These foods have moderate environmental impacts.

You may guess the foods you want to eat more of. Adding a serving of nuts, minimally processed whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, olive oil, and fish every day reduces the risk of the five diseases in question. Excluding fish, these foods also had the lowest negative environmental impacts. These foods are present in plant-heavy diets like the Mediterranean diet, a doctors favorite.

The researchers note that certain nuances can make the environmental or health impacts stronger or weaker: leafy greens are better for reducing type 2 diabetes risk than some other vegetables while frying fish can negate its positive health effects. Wild-caught fish can be less resource intensive than farm-raised fish, using no irrigation water and resulting in less eutrophication, but still threatens the overall health of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Production of wild-caught fish can result in habitat disturbance through dredging and trawling, as well as bycatch production. Global fish stocks are dramatically overfished, so consuming both farm-raised fish and wild-caught fish can be unsustainable.

Its all about choosing foods, mosly plants, as close to their natural state as possible. Taste the rainbow, is an accurate suggestion if youre talking about eating a diverse range of colorful fruits and vegetables, not Skittles.

Adding servings instead of swapping them could impact long term health, and the researchers arent sure how. The extra calories could lead to weight gain, so the best approach may be switching out that single serving of short ribs for spaghetti squash.

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Gigantic study reveals the healthiest foods are the most sustainable - Inverse