Dietary guidelines miss mark
Most countries advise diets that don’t meet global targets, paper finds
Astudy has found most dietary recommendations provided by national governments are incompatible with global health and environmental targets such as the Paris Climate Agreement, and are in need of reform. In the paper, published in
University of Adelaide Health and Medical Science Honours student Luke Spajic worked alongside researchers from the Livestock, Environment and People programme at the University of Oxford, and Harvard and Tufts Universities in the United States.
The researchers extracted the recommendations from the dietary guidelines of 85 countries.
They modelled the recommendations against global health and environmental targets, including the goal to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by a third, and the agreement to limit global warming to below 2C.
For comparison, the impacts of adopting the World Health Organisation (WHO) global dietary recommendations, and the more comprehensive and ambitious recommendations of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, were also examined.
Spajic said they found that, on average, adoption of national dietary guidelines was associated with a 15 per cent reduction of premature mortality, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 13 per cent.
“However, a third of guidelines were incompatible with the global health agenda on non-communicable diseases, and between 67 per cent to 87 per cent were incompatible with the Paris Climate Agreement and other environmental targets,” Spajic said. “Taken together, 98 per cent of national guidelines were incompatible with at least one global health and environmental target, meaning that even if the whole world followed them, we would still fail to meet the targets governments have signed up to.”
Spajic said he was not surprised by the findings, as many national dietary guidelines in the study had not been updated for some time and did not include recommendations around environmental sustainability.
Adoption of the WHO recommendations was associated with similar health and environmental changes as many national guidelines.
However, adoption of those of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, was associated with a third greater reduction in premature mortality, more than three times greater reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and general attainment of the global health and environmental targets.
In Australia, adoption of the EATLancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, could lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 86 per cent and premature deaths of 31,000 (compared with 61 and 29,000).
Spajic says Australia’s national guidelines could be both healthier and more sustainable.
“We urgently need to update our national dietary guidelines to reflect the latest evidence on healthy eating.
“The impact of recent drought and bushfires in Australia has also added to the argument for environmentally sustainable recommendations to be included in our national guidelines.
“In Australia, we found that placing stricter limits on red meat and dairy would provide the greatest environmental benefit, and increased recommendations of whole grains, nuts and seeds, as well as further limits on processed and red meat would have the biggest impact on health,” he said.
Dr Marco Springmann from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, who led the study, says more ambitious guidelines on red meat and dairy would be a good starting point.
In the study, fewer than half of all nations with food-based dietary guidelines fulfilled any of their recommendations, and no country fulfilled all of them.
“Food policies also need to encourage us to eat closer to national guidelines, and this includes investment in targeted public health campaigns that communicate what healthy and sustainable eating looks like,” he said.
The study also highlights the need for national food guidelines to be reviewed more frequently to match global targets. ■