HOW DIETS AFFECT HUMAN HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten". Cree Indian Prophecy

In this book, you can learn how global dietary transitions towards diets higher in calories, meat, dairy, eggs, and processed foods, when combined with population growth, will likely decrease human health and environmental sustainability.

Instead, switching diets away from foods that are associated with poor health and have high environmental impacts and instead towards foods with better health outcomes and lower environmental

impacts would likely improve diet-related human and environmental health.

Finding ways to shift diets in these ways will be difficult, but possibly necessary if we are to avoid large increases in poor health and environmental degradation. Taxes, education initiatives, food labeling, and changes in the food environment have been successful at shifting diets to become healthier, and might also be effective at shifting diets to become more sustainable. Additionally, because the effectiveness of these policies often increases through time, further implementation of these and other policies in the near future would

likely maximize the chance of a healthier and more sustainable future.