Introduction
In 2019 the general medical journal, The Lancet, set up the EAT-Lancet Commission to address the need to feed a growing global population a healthy diet while also maintaining sustainable food systems that will minimise damage to our planet. The result was the Planetary Health Diet (PHD), a set of policies, strategies and guidelines (note, not a collection of recipes and menus)
On 2nd October this year the commission published an update [1]
As in the earlier 2019 report this recommends a healthy diet consisting of a large proportion of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and plant-based products
The report does not propose a vegan diet. As a result the PHD includes meat, fish and dairy supplying 12% of daily calories (Table 1)
However, most of the principles laid out in the PHD can be applied to vegan diets.
The report is primarily for scientists, policy makers and the food industry, but consumers will also find a great deal of useful information to help guide dietary choices
This Piece gives a few comments on the Planetary Health Diet from a vegan point of view; it does not attempt to look at every section in the report.
The report is based on 11 global food system models, analysing a range of scenarios between Business As Usual (BAU) and wholesale takeup of the PHD. There are some differences between the assumptions underlying each model giving differing conclusions in some areas, but the combination provides very useful information on possible outcomes.
Goals
The report lists three Goals to be met by the PHD (Section 5)
- Right to Healthy Food
- Within Planetary Boundaries
- With Secure and Just Social Foundations
These are excellent goals, essential for a healthy, fair and sustainable planet and reflect the case that identifying a healthy diet is a multi-dimensional problem.
The report proposes Solutions and Actions to achieve each Goal (Figure 16: Goals, solutions, and actions to achieve healthy, sustainable, and just food systems)
However, it seems to me that there is another dimension and another Goal to be considered : Sentience
Sentience is the capacity to feel and perceive subjective experiences. It includes feelings such as joy, pain, love, fear, compassion and much more
I suggest a further Goal to guide the Planetary Health Diet:
- Goal 4: The Right of all Sentient Beings to Life and Freedom
This 4th Goal would provide an additional dimension to the principles underlying the PHD. It would address the horrendous experiences of animals processed by the industrial food system, logically point to a vegan diet, and crucially increase the likelihood of achieving the first three goals.
If Goal 4 were added then further solutions and Actions will follow. As with the PHD, there is no enforcement of a plant-based diet, but there can be incentives. All of the Solutions that the PHD contains could be taken further, for instance those under Goal 2 to work within Planetary Boundaries, and to stay well within them.
The following Solutions in addition to those proposed by the PHD would help to promote, implement and defend Goal 4:
- Solution 9: Shift to plant-based diets
- Solution 10: Promote replacements of animal-derived nutrition
- Solution 11: Retire existing livestock and repurpose associated infrastructure where possible
- Solution 12: Further extend sustainable biodiverse environments
The fourth Goal would remove meat, dairy, fish and other feeling species from the PHD. There is no dispute that ruminants and many other animals, that have historically constituted part of our diets, are sentient beings feeling pain and emotions. That alone should be enough to warrant an end to their unnecessary suffering.
But the report also describes other issues which give further reasons for seeking to remove these from our diets.
Health
Pandemics come with such massive costs to individuals and society that contemplating even a small probability of one is an extremely risky strategy. Given the increasing incidence of antimicrobial resistance, reducing antimicrobial use by 42% as described in the report is insufficient to lower the risks of livestock farming to an acceptable level.
The extracts below are taken from Panel 2, which in my opinion if taken to a logical conclusion, imply that livestock farming is incompatible with a healthy, sustainable planet.
“Antimicrobial resistance and pandemic risk have increased in part due to increased animal–human contact, either through direct interaction with wildlife or indirectly through vectors or intermediate, domesticated species”
“Large biomass of domesticated animals and birds poses a risk for the emergence of novel pathogens affecting humans and animals, and accelerates the frequency of epidemic and pandemic disease events”
“We estimated that adoption of the PHD would decrease antimicrobial use by approximately 42% due to reductions in animal-sourced foods”
Animal Welfare
The report suggests that “a smaller livestock sector creates opportunities to improve animal health and wellbeing, environmental outcomes, and labour quality” (Panel 7)
It acknowledges “growing concern related to intensive, confined, and industrialised farming systems (ie, factory farming). High stocking densities, long transportation times, and practices that restrict natural behaviour”
But 1000 factory farms instead of 2000 factory farms for example will still result in unacceptable animal suffering, and a stressful environment for those who work in them
More resources should be allocated to educate, lobby, legislate and promote plant-based foods in order to bring a significant reduction and hopefully an end to this part of the food system
Allocating more resources to the PHD will be challenging, and even more so for a plant-based food system. In a section entitled “Identify and address barriers to change ” the report identifies several difficulties in achieving the PHD, including:
- Insufficient political leadership and appropriate governance framework
- Corporate interests used against public interests
- Weak and fragmented demand for action
Ruminant Numbers
One of the main contributors to agricultural Green House Gas emissions are ruminants (eg, cattle, sheep, and goats). The PHD anticipates a reduction in numbers, but estimates that consumption of livestock numbers per year would continue as follows:
“livestock numbers would decline globally to 1·1 billion ruminant animals per year (a 26% reduction); dairy animals to 785 million per year (a 4% reduction); and non-ruminants (of which >95% are poultry and <5% are pigs) to 66 billion per year (a 19% reduction). Conversely, fish production would increase to 220 million tonnes per year (a 46% increase from 2020 levels)” (Panel 7)
The models indicate that this would enable the goals to be achieved, but clearly huge numbers of animals will continue to be exploited and killed, so we would still expect there to be significant damage to health and biodiversity.
Surprisingly, given the current state of the oceans, under the PHD fish production would increase!
Is this a missed opportunity even for a non-vegan world? Perhaps it keeps the world within its planetary boundaries, but by a smaller margin.
Reforestation
One of the benefits described by the PHD is the opportunity for reforestation and the restoration of biodiversity:
This restoration is particularly important in forest biomes, which are strongly transgressed and require 5·5m km² of tropical forest restoration and 3m km² of temperate forest restoration, at the expense of agricultural land (Land System Change)
Under an EAT-Lancet scenario, the food system stays within land, biodiversity, and emission boundaries. Increased productivity, dietary shifts, and reduced food loss and waste reduce the land area needed for agricultural production, which drives the expansion of natural land available for biodiversity (Panel 6)
Changes in livestock numbers indicate reductions in methane and nitrous oxide emissions (22% reduction versus 2020 emissions) and grazing lands (11% reduction versus 2020; ~340 Million hectares). (Panel 7: Challenges and changes in livestock production)
In a vegan world, without the 1 billion ruminants, there could possibly be up to a further two billion hectares released for rewilding, an astonishing six times as much as the PHD estimates.
Our World In Data describes the vast land use by livestock farming
“Most of the world’s farmland today is used for the production of meat and dairy, either as grazing land or cropland to grow animal feed. 77% of all agricultural land is used to raise livestock for meat and dairy” [2]
If the world adopted a plant-based diet, we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares [3]
UK Considerations
The report claims that “Both regional policies and voluntary initiatives in the EU and the UK have introduced zero-deforestation commitments across supply chains” (Solution 4: halt agricultural conversion of intact ecosystems)
However, these ought not to be regarded as equivalent: The UK policy applies only to companies with turnover > £50m. The EU legislation is more rigorous requiring geolocation data, and is due to take effect in 2026, whereas currently no start data is available for UK
So it is optimistic to assume that the UK zero-deforestation commitment will be effective, or even enforced
Conclusion
Implementing The Planetary Health Diet would certainly bring improvements to health, justice, biodiversity and a habitable planet.
A completely plant-based diet would significantly amplify the gains estimated by the PHD, and further respect the rights of other species with whom we share this fragile Earth.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01201-2/fulltext
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-productivity-crucial
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Planetary Health Diet Report Sections and Goals
| Executive summary |
| Section 1: what is a healthy diet? |
| Section 2: sustainable food systems within planetary boundaries |
| Section 3: justice in food systems |
| Section 4: assessing potential environmental and socioeconomic consequences of a food systems transformation |
| Section 5: solutions and actions to improve health, environmental sustainability, and justice |
| Goal 1: achieve the Planetary Health Diet for all |
| Goal 2: produce the planetary health diet within planetary boundaries |
| Goal 3: secure social foundations |
| Section 6: A just food systems transformation is possible |
| Conclusions: accelerating meaningful action |
