TY - JOUR
T1 - Environmental and human health trade-offs in potential Chinese dietary shifts
AU - Guo, Yixin
AU - He, Pan
AU - Searchinger, Tim D.
AU - Chen, Youfan
AU - Springmann, Marco
AU - Zhou, Mi
AU - Zhang, Xin
AU - Zhang, Lin
AU - Mauzerall, Denise L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Y.G. acknowledges support from Princeton University , including a five-year Graduate Fellowship from the Princeton School of International and Public Affairs, a Dean’s Completion Fellowship from the Graduate School, and a research grant from the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. We thank David Kanter for helpful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2022/3/18
Y1 - 2022/3/18
N2 - Dietary shifts from staples toward meats, fruits, and vegetables increase environmental impacts. Excessive red meat intake and micro-nutrient deficiencies also raise health concerns. Previous research examined environmental and health consequences of alternative diets but overlooked impacts on air pollution and land use change. Here we examine implications of four potential Chinese dietary shifts on ammonia and particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon storage loss associated with land-use change, water use, and human health. We show that a diet that replaces red meat with soy benefits the environment and avoids 57,000 PM2.5-related premature deaths annually. Dietary health benefits, however, appear larger with adoption of the Chinese Dietary Guideline (CDG) and EAT-Lancet diets, which prevent over one million premature deaths annually. However, both diets increase water use and GHGs. CDG also increases land use change, but EAT-Lancet reduces it by cutting dairy and red meat. Complex benefits and trade-offs of dietary shifts emphasize the need for further improvements in agricultural management to enable larger health-environment co-benefits.
AB - Dietary shifts from staples toward meats, fruits, and vegetables increase environmental impacts. Excessive red meat intake and micro-nutrient deficiencies also raise health concerns. Previous research examined environmental and health consequences of alternative diets but overlooked impacts on air pollution and land use change. Here we examine implications of four potential Chinese dietary shifts on ammonia and particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon storage loss associated with land-use change, water use, and human health. We show that a diet that replaces red meat with soy benefits the environment and avoids 57,000 PM2.5-related premature deaths annually. Dietary health benefits, however, appear larger with adoption of the Chinese Dietary Guideline (CDG) and EAT-Lancet diets, which prevent over one million premature deaths annually. However, both diets increase water use and GHGs. CDG also increases land use change, but EAT-Lancet reduces it by cutting dairy and red meat. Complex benefits and trade-offs of dietary shifts emphasize the need for further improvements in agricultural management to enable larger health-environment co-benefits.
KW - PM air pollution
KW - agriculture
KW - ammonia emissions
KW - climate
KW - dietary health
KW - diets
KW - greenhouse gas emissions
KW - land use opportunity costs
KW - sustainable food systems
KW - water use
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U2 - 10.1016/j.oneear.2022.02.002
DO - 10.1016/j.oneear.2022.02.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85126583836
SN - 2590-3330
VL - 5
SP - 268
EP - 282
JO - One Earth
JF - One Earth
IS - 3
ER -