A recipe for avoiding 15 million deaths a year and climate disaster is
fixing food, scientists say
[October 03, 2025]
By MELINA WALLING
About 15 million deaths could be avoided each year and agricultural
emissions could drop by 15% if people worldwide shift to healthier,
predominantly plant-based diets, according to the EAT-Lancet Commission,
which brought together scientists worldwide to review the latest data on
food's role in human health, climate change, biodiversity and people's
working and living conditions.
Their conclusion: Without substantial changes to the food system, the
worst effects of climate change will be unavoidable, even if humans
successfully switch to cleaner energy.
“If we do not transition away from the unsustainable food path we’re on
today, we will fail on the climate agenda. We will fail on the
biodiversity agenda. We will fail on food security. We’ll fail on so
many pathways,” said study co-author Johan Rockström, who leads the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The commission's first report in 2019 was regarded as a “really
monumental landmark study” for its willingness to take food system
reform seriously while factoring in human and environmental health, said
Adam Shriver, director of wellness and nutrition at the Harkin Institute
for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement.
Key points from the latest report:
A ‘planetary health diet’ could avert 15 million deaths every year
The first EAT-Lancet report proposed a “planetary health diet” centered
on grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. The update maintains
that to improve their health while also reducing global warming, it's a
good idea for people to eat one serving each of animal protein and dairy
per day while limiting red meat to about once a week. This particularly
applies to people in developed nations who disproportionately contribute
to climate change and have more choices about the foods they eat.
The dietary recommendations were based on data about risks of
preventable diseases like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,
not environmental criteria. Human and planetary health happen to be in
alignment, the researchers said.
Rockström said it may seem “boring” for an analysis to reach the same
conclusion six years later, but he finds this reassuring because food
science is a rapidly moving field with many big studies and improving
analytics.
Food is one of the most deeply personal choices a person can make, and
“the health component touches everyone’s heart,” Rockström said. While
tackling global challenges is complicated, what individuals can do is
relatively straightforward, like reducing meat consumption without
eliminating it altogether.
“People associate what they eat with identity” and strict diets can
scare people off, but even small changes help, said Emily Cassidy, a
research associate with climate science nonprofit Project Drawdown. She
wasn’t involved with the research.
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A worker harvests cabbage March 5, 2025, in Holtville, Calif. (AP
Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
 Our food choices could push the
planet past a tipping point
The researchers looked beyond climate change and greenhouse gas
emissions to factors including biodiversity, land use, water quality
and agricultural pollution — and concluded that food systems are the
biggest culprit in pushing Earth to the brink of thresholds for a
livable planet.
The report is “super comprehensive” in its scope, said Kathleen
Merrigan, a professor of food systems at Arizona State University
who also wasn’t involved with the research. It goes deep enough to
show how farming and labor practices, consumption habits and other
aspects of food production are interconnected — and could be
changed, she said.
“It’s like we’ve had this slow awakening to the role of food” in
discussions about planetary existence, Merrigan said.
Changing worldwide diets alone could lead to a 15% reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, because the production of
meat, particularly red meat, requires releasing a lot of
planet-warming gases, researchers concluded. Increased crop
productivity, reductions in food waste and other improvements could
bump that to 20%, the report said.
Cassidy said that if the populations of high- and middle-income
countries were to limit beef and lamb consumption to about one
serving a week, as recommended in this latest EAT-Lancet report,
they could reduce emissions equal to Russia's annual emissions
total.
Incorporating justice in an unequal world
Meanwhile, the report concludes that nearly half the world's
population is being denied adequate food, a healthy environment or
decent work in the food system. Ethnic minorities, Indigenous
peoples, women and children and people in conflict zones all face
specific risks to their human rights and access to food.
With United Nations climate talks around the corner in November,
Rockström and other researchers hope leaders in countries around the
world will incorporate scientific perspectives about the food system
into their national policies. To do otherwise “takes us in a
direction that makes us more and more fragile,” he said.
“I mean both in terms of supply of food, but also in terms of health
and in terms of stability of our environments,” Rockström said. “And
this is a recipe to make societies weaker and weaker.”
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