Author Name: StartRight
For decades, humans are dependent on animal foods and products as their sole source of health. These animal foods and products have caused a lot of harm not only to humans but also to the economy and the environment.
Back in the century, people did not even have the awareness of health and nutrition but as society progressed, so did the field of medicine and food sciences. The nutritionist today have proven with their extensive research that Animal-based foods are dangerous to health and plant-based foods are the only solution to a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.
The question arises, why choose Plant-Based?
Let me put it this way: Plant-based foods are the healthiest option for a world that is crumbling at the hands of consuming animal food and its production. Here’s how:
Global Health Burden
People consuming Imbalanced diets low in fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains, and high in red and processed meat are responsible for the greatest health burden worldwide. In addition, high consumption of red and processed meat and low consumption of fruits and vegetables are important diet-related risk factors contributing to substantial early mortality in most regions.
Animal foods have caused diseases such as, heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers accounting for a combined 15.2 million deaths in 2016. Diabetes killed 1.6 million people in 2016, up from less than 1 million in 2000.
These dietary health risks are expected to worsen by increasing the human, social, and economic health burden from chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) associated with high body weight and unhealthy diets.
Global Economic Burden
The high health rate of problems also leads to high health costs, which overburdens the already struggling economy of the country. For example, the global cost of diabetes is now $825 billion dollars per year. The total economic loss due to cardiovascular disease in low- and middle- income countries was estimated to amount to $3.7 trillion (2010) between 2011 and 2015. In addition to that, in 2014, more than 2.1 billion people, nearly 30% of the global population, were overweight or obese and 5% of the deaths worldwide were attributable to obesity. In 2014, the global economic impact of obesity was estimated to be US $2.0 trillion or 2.8% of the global gross domestic product (GDP).
Planetary Burden
The environment is deteriorating day by day. Animal products are more damaging than gas emitting vehicles. The global temperatures are expected to rise if we keeping living the way we are living now. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that urgent and profound changes must be made to the way we live if we are to keep global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
The food system is responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of which up to 80% are associated with livestock production. 40% of the earth’s land is occupied to grow livestock grains. As a result, the global food system has contributed to the crossing of several of the proposed planetary boundaries that attempt to define a safe operating space for humanity on a stable Earth system.
Meat production is one of the foremost problems leading to all these issues. Instead of feeding grain to the animals and then animals to humans, we must take a direct approach. The plants must be fed to humans and this is the only solution to the problems listed above.
At the consumption end, animal-based food is implicated in many of the chronic degenerative diseases that afflict industrial and newly industrializing societies, particularly cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The workforce in these factories and agricultural land are exposed to pesticides, which are a leading cause of cancer.
It can be concluded that Animal based diet must be replaced with a sustainable and healthy alternative which is the Plant-based diet in order to minimize health risks, economic burden and save the environment from hazardous gasses and substances.
