How can improving your diet help curb the effects of climate change? This is what a recent study published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how dietary patterns could contribute to reduced carbon emissions. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand how personal changes could provide environmental benefits.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data obtained from 71 participants of an initial 84 postmenopausal women aged 40–65 years who reported at least two hot flashes per day. The women were given a low-fat vegan diet with cooked soybeans for a period of 12 weeks. The goal of the study was to ascertain how the diet change impacted hot flashed while also analyzing the environmental impacts of a non-meat diet.
In the end, the researchers not only found that the low-fat vegan diet greatly decreased hot flashes but also estimated an approximate 35 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and an approximate 34 percent decrease in energy consumption. The team notes the decreases in greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption resulted from decreases in red meat consumption.
“This research shows that replacing meat and dairy with plant‑based foods can dramatically cut emissions while improving health at the same time,” said Dr. Hana Kahleova, who is the Director of Clinical Research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and a co-author on the study. “Dietary choices are one of the most immediate actions individuals can take to reduce climate pollution. Even modest changes, when adopted widely, could have a meaningful impact on climate change.”
What new insight into the connection between nutrition and climate change will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
