By Dr Rebecca E Jones
Sunday, April 7th, marks World Health Day 2024, and this year’s theme is ‘My Health, My Right’. As most vegans do, I believe that a plant-based diet is the answer to almost everything. But this time, I’m not alone. It seems that in recent years, the world’s scientific gaze is shifting towards veganism as the answer to the globe’s lifestyle related disease, world famine, and climate disaster.
In the UK, veganism is booming, and almost 5% of the UK population is now vegan. And we’re not alone; in the US, around 4% of people identify as vegan, and Australia is in the lead, with 6% of the population following a vegan diet. However, in the developing world, veganism is more than just a new trend. Many South East Asian populations eat a primarily plant-based diet, perhaps including a small amount of dairy and egg, and India has the lowest meat consumption in the world.
But there is a cultural shift happening all over the globe. It isn’t just because of people becoming more aware of the plight of sentient beings imprisoned into animal agriculture, the main motivation for ethical vegans, like myself. There is also a growing body of evidence for the health benefits of a plant-based diet, and of the negative environmental implications of the meat and dairy industry, especially its role in climate change.
In the US, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has been educating both doctors and lay-people for a long time about the benefits of a vegan diet. In Canada, their most recently published nutrition guideline encourages the consumption of more plant-based foods as a primary source of protein, while meat and dairy barely make an appearance. Although the UK Eatwell guideline doesn’t explicitly discuss the reduction of animal products, the most recent iteration does advise a reduction in consumption of red and processed meats, and includes plant-based alternatives in the dairy section.
So why this shift towards plant-based eating?
I always think of veganism in three ways; it reduces and prevents harm to animals; it can be a means to improving our physical health; it is probably the best way of eating to reduce our carbon footprint. The reasons for the first one are obvious; not killing and eating animals is better for them. But the beneficial effects on our health are pretty obvious, too. It has been understood by the scientific community for some time now that a plant-based diet can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Scientific evidence shows quite clearly that a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and legumes is preferable to one heavy with animal products if we are to reduce our risk of hypertension, ischaemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancers such as colorectal, breast and prostate. In fact, the World Health Organization, which is responsible for global public health, declared in 2015 that red and processed meats are associated with cancer. When global dietary habits are contributing to 11 million premature deaths per year (yes, you read that right), a move towards veganism doesn’t seem so extreme, does it?
It wouldn’t be right to discuss World Health Day without considering the recent pandemic, which affected most of the globe, and is still affecting millions worldwide. When I told you that vegans believe a plant-based diet could fix everything, I wasn’t joking! One hypothesis for the origin of the virus is ‘zoonotic spillover’, meaning it came from other animals, most likely from a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan. The evidence certainly supports this as the most likely explanation. It wouldn’t be the first significant outbreak of infection that has been associated with animal agriculture. The UN has stated that zoonotic causes account for 60% of all infections in people. But more interestingly, in 2016, they also described that 75% of emerging infections originate from other animals, with ‘livestock’ serving as a bridge between human and wildlife infections. The UN has recognised that intensive farming and the subsequent lack of genetic diversity lead to zoonotic infections such as the Avian Influenza (bird flu) of 2005 and the Swine flu of 2009. Other zoonotic disease outbreaks include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012, and Ebola in 2014. More worryingly, the UN also describes how such zoonotic infections are beginning to occur more frequently.
As well as the increasing use of intensive farming, the inherent overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture could be contributing to this increased frequency of outbreaks, as it results in increasing antibiotic resistance, which can then contribute to spreading of zoonotic infections. It is also thought that environmental factors such as clearance of forests, which would normally provide a barrier between humans and wild animals, and global warming, which provides a more favourable environment for germs, are associated factors.
The effects of animal agriculture are also being further recognised as associated with climate change, and even the UN has declared that the use of animals in food production has had catastrophic effects on the environment. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have estimated that the factory farming of livestock is responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, but the burden is further increased when we consider the effect of deforestation on carbon emissions, and the environmental cost of animal feed and water. Half of the world’s ice and desert free land is used for agriculture, and most of this is used for either livestock or animal feed. Recently, the UN has gone one step further and recommended that a vegan diet is vital to save the global population from hunger, fuel poverty, and climate change. China began to tackle the problem of its increasing meat consumption back in 2016. They recognised the effects on both the health of its population and on global warming, and aimed to reduce the nation’s meat consumption by 50%.
As individual nations and agencies are opening their eyes to the detrimental effects of consuming animal products on both our health and on the health of the planet, they have started working together for a solution. The EAT-Lancet Commission, produced in 2019, brought together scientists from all over the world to reach a consensus of targets for feeding the global population in a way that is healthy and sustainable. They recognized the impact of our current eating patterns on ill-health and climate instability, and what they came up with was a diet made up of half vegetables, fruits and nuts, and the other half primarily whole-grains and plant proteins. In their briefing to healthcare professionals, they advised us to encourage protein consumption from plant-based sources, and that poultry, dairy and eggs could be consumed in modest quantities, but are optional and not necessary for a well-rounded diet. They also suggest that red meat should be consumed in low quantities, if at all, and they confirmed that a vegan diet is healthy.
But this year’s World Health Day theme is ‘My Health, My Right’. How does pushing everyone to eat plant-based fit in with their ‘rights’ to eat what they want? Of course, everyone, within reason, has a right to eat what they want. As a vegan, I would ask you to consider the rights of the sentient beings you are consuming, however. But even if we’re just discussing human health, the theme is based on your right to good health and access to healthcare. If we know that eating primarily plant sourced foods improves our health, shouldn’t we be encouraging this for everyone as a way to improve all of our lives? Veganism could also contribute to ending world hunger; 760m tonnes of the crops we grow are fed to livestock each year, as part of a very inefficient system where it can take up to 16kg of grain to produce just 1kg of meat. Perhaps it’s time to cut out the middle man (or cow) and use these crops to feed humans directly. After all, good nutrition will lead to the good health that everybody so rightly deserves.
What strikes me most about the crux of ‘planetary health’, is just how very connected we all are to one another and to our planet earth. Yes, the theme of this year’s World Health Day is ‘My Health, My Right’, but I would argue that we need to be considering ‘Our Health, Our Rights’, and moving us all towards a better food system that will lead to an improved quality of life for us all.
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