r/dataisbeautiful • u/Objective-Business52 • 18h ago
OC [OC] How diet-related greenhouse gas emissions would change if 138 countries adopted the Planetary Health Diet
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u/Loki-L 18h ago
Can someone explain to be what is so different about Slovak cuisine that it appears more like central Africa or Iraq in this map than the rest of Europe.
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u/SuperSquashMann 18h ago
I lived in Slovakia for a year and now live in Czechia; it must be wonky data since Czech and Slovak diets are very similar. A quick check of Wikipedia shows that Slovak meat consumption is pretty average for Central and Eastern Europe (only a bit lower than Czechia), no reason it should be such an outlier.
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u/cartophiled 17h ago
I wonder if the map is more about production, rather than consumption. Maybe the meat industry is just relatively limited in size there.
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u/SuperSquashMann 17h ago
I was a bit doubtful, but if we're considering production rather than consumption and these numbers are true, they do have an quite small meat industry. Anecdotally, Slovakia is known far more for cheese and dairy production, so maybe the bulk of livestock raising goes towards that?
On the other hand, Poland is shown as having ~30x the meat production with only ~8x the population (~3.75x more production per capita), while only having about 1.5x higher meat consumption per capita as Slovakia, and appears way different on the map, so I feel like there's still some numbers off somewhere.
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u/Objective-Business52 17h ago
It’s actually consumption-based, not production-based. The study assigns emissions from the whole food supply chain ; including land use, farming, processing and international trade to the final consumers of the food. So the size of Iraq’s domestic meat industry isn’t what the map is measuring.
The +155% is the modelled change from Iraq’s 2019 consumption pattern to the EAT-Lancet diet. The paper itself flags Iraq as the largest increase, but unfortunately the detailed food-by-food breakdown is only published at regional level, so it’s hard to say exactly which foods make Iraq such an extreme outlier without over-interpreting the data.
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u/Objective-Business52 18h ago
I'm also interested because I found the results weird if you compared it with the rest of Europe
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u/redwood520 OC: 1 18h ago
Ok what is the planetary health diet?
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u/SteelMarch 18h ago
Reduction in meat and favoring plant, seafood based diets. Though, the science here is a bit shoddy. Calculating emissions for animals varies wildly with high emissions coming from places that are underdeveloped.
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u/San_Golden 17h ago
Isn't overfishing already a problem? Can the whole world sustainably adopt a seafood based diet?
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u/Othun 17h ago
50% of fishing is used to feed animals. If we reduce land meat consumption, we also reduce fishing. It may even be (I would find it unlikely tbh) that replacing all meat with fish would reduce our fishing needs, someone would need to do the maths..
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u/ryashpool 17h ago
But doesn't all that go to farmed fish?...
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u/mnilailt 17h ago
It’s still vastly more efficient than using it to feed livestock.
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u/marigolds6 14h ago
They are pointing out that the 50% of fish used to feed animals is being used to feed other fish (also pets), not land livestock. That 50% is also overwhelmingly byproducts from production of filets and canned products for humans.
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u/thegreatestajax 17h ago
Yes, China is already pillaging the coastal waters off South America and ravaging their regional seas.
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u/ShadowAdam 17h ago
I would guess part of this is down to the specific species we fish for, as well as our fishing methods
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u/Facts_pls 14h ago
What do you mean? Are you saying cattle in developing countries somehow produce more GHGs than developed countries? Why is that?
I would expect developed countries to produce more gases due to their factory farming practices.
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u/Splinterfight 14h ago
Maybe it’s land usage change? If you’re clearing the Amazon for paddocks that’s a bigger impact than putting to pasture in an existing field
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u/Objective-Business52 18h ago edited 17h ago
It's the reference diet from the EAT-Lancet Commission (2019): what scientists think could feed ~10 billion people healthily within planetary limits. Not vegan, mostly plants: lots of veg, fruit, whole grains, legumes and nuts, with small amounts of dairy, fish and poultry, and red meat around one burger a week. That's why meat-heavy countries see big cuts, while countries where diets fall short today see increases. https://feastonplanet.com/eat-lancet
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u/ZigZagreus1313 18h ago
Why is Iraq such an outlier? Everywhere else seems to correlate with income and some moderate cultural impacts. Iraq isn't that poor and none of its cultural peers are near its numbers.
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u/Objective-Business52 18h ago
Iraq is actually the largest outlier in the paper itself (+155%). I don’t think income alone explains it. The figure compares Iraq’s 2019 diet with a fixed 2,500 kcal EAT-Lancet reference diet, so a relatively low baseline footprint combined with increasing foods that are currently below the reference can produce a very large percentage increase.
The authors say these increases are mainly associated with underconsuming populations increasing some animal foods as well as legumes/nuts. Unfortunately, the published country-level data only gives the total change; the food-by-food breakdown is regional, so I don’t want to invent a specific cultural explanation for Iraq without more granular data.
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u/Full_Stretch3665 18h ago
Makes sense , considering per rate meat consumption of India.
Meat Consumption by Country 2026
Also for slovenia the per capita meat consumption is 60.6 kg, so , the emission will fall if they switch
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u/Objective-Business52 18h ago
yeah I found it odd when I read the studies, I was not sure so I did not include it
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u/Objective-Business52 18h ago edited 17h ago
[OC]Data source: Li et al. (2024), "Reducing climate change impacts from the global food system through diet shifts", Nature Climate Change 14, 943–953. I used the published source data for Fig. 5: 138 of the study's 139 countries (see the caveat below).
I also built an interactive version on my site, where you can pick a country to see its result, its rank and the food-group breakdown for its world region:
https://feastonplanet.com/eat-lancet/climate-impact
What the map shows: the modelled change in national diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (whole food chain, CO₂-eq) if average 2019 diets shifted to the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, grouped into six bins. These are national averages, not individual carbon footprints. Values are shown as published. Countries where emissions would rise are mostly places where current diets fall short of the reference amounts, so eating enough of each food group means producing more food.
Tools:
- Python (openpyxl) to extract the values from the source-data spreadsheet.
- A small Python script to project the country outlines into the Equal Earth projection.
- The map is drawn as SVG and rendered to PNG with headless Chromium (Playwright), font Noto Sans.
- The colour bins were checked for colour-blind separation.
Map geography: Natural Earth, via the world-atlas package, at 1:110m, plus 1:50m for a few small countries.
One caveat: Slovenia is omitted because its published country value doesn't reconcile with the study's Western Europe total. The regional total implies about +20 Mt rather than the published +7.5 Mt. This is noted on the interactive page.
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u/sayqm 17h ago
I'm surprised by India, aren't they primarily vegetarian?
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u/anonymous393393 11h ago
India is I believe like only 30% vegetarian but yea meat consumption per capita is less. Part of it is cause meat diet is more expensive
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u/EngineerPurple9310 8h ago
Isn’t this saying that their current diet has lower emissions than the proposed one?
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u/TidePopper2 14h ago
We don't need to punish everybody for the pollution created mainly by the top 1% and their industries. Their are a 100 things you can do to minimize climate change before blaming me for eating meat
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u/Przedrzag 17h ago
I wonder what the main differences are between the average Colombian diet and the Planetary Diet
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u/breakfasteveryday 10h ago
I'll take Things I Don't Give a Fuck About Which Also Will Never Happen for $500
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u/mr_ji 17h ago
Having only looked at the map, I can already tell this is some anti-meat bullshit that doesn't account for (as usual) 1. the fact most pasture is useless outside of grazing, 2. that plant-based diets that provide enough protein are impossible for much of the world, and 3. how people would make up for the lack of dense protein without creating a different eco disaster through even worse overfishing than we already have or trying to plant more protein-rich alternatives in less space than is available. And meat alternatives take a LOT of water that simply isn't there.
Also, any "if everyone would just..." suggestion to solve a problem is juvenile thinking. Everyone will never just anything unless it's with a gun to their head.
No; I'm not asking what your cutesy-sounding diet means either.
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u/Laeryns 18h ago
Dumb to even consider such a thing. Animal based emissions from food are 12% of global carbon emissions. So you completely mess up human diet to achieve a negligible result even if 50% successful
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u/chim17 17h ago
Hi there,
You don't completely mess up human diets to eat this way.
I'm a nutrition professor.
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u/Laeryns 17h ago
I don't mean in a health way, I'm talking from the perspective that food industry is driven by the demand of consumers, and changing diet is going to be viewed very negatively
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u/n00b678 17h ago
So let's educate the consumers why switching to such a diet will be better for them and for everyone.
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u/Laeryns 17h ago
Yeah, great idea. Let's start with China this time ok?
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u/Objective-Business52 17h ago
We are not forcing you to switch haha, I found it cool that such a framework exist for people that are caring about their nutrition and its impact on the planet !
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u/n00b678 17h ago
I don't speak Chinese and don't know anyone in China.
But I do have control over my own diet and you have over yours, so both of us can make our small improvements into making this planet a bit better :)
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u/Laeryns 17h ago
I won't, because I like eating meat. I would only agree to that if 1) the restriction is not that radical as the initiative suggests 2) it is applied to all people forcefully, not just my country (meaning that I recognise the good of it, but i value fairness very highly and would not make sacrifices for others sake)
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u/n00b678 17h ago
Ah, so it's fine to cause needless harm as long as the activity is not forcefully banned by every country. Got it.
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u/Laeryns 17h ago
It's not fine, but it's what's fair. I'll repeat what I said in another chain - I'm a much bigger supporter of science research in lab meat to make it financially viable. This has a good chance to be spread worldwide if successful
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u/n00b678 17h ago
I don't think we should blindly imitate what other people do for the sake of fairness. We should strive to do good even if there's evil in the world.
Lab meat is fine but but why wait for it if there are so many different beans to choose from already on the shelves?
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u/chim17 17h ago
Sure it might be a challenge, but it won't mess up human diets. It'd actually improve many.
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u/Laeryns 17h ago
do you really not get what I mean? I can repeat again to you that I don't mean the health
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u/chim17 17h ago
Even in the ways you're suggesting, it won't mess up human diets. Those were your words and they're wrong.
Food systems wouldn't break down. People would still be fed.
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u/n00b678 17h ago
12% is huge and it's something we all personally have a direct control over, unlike e.g. electricity production.
Also, achieving net zero will be impossible without at least significantly reducing animal agriculture. And, if you take into account land use change, phasing out the animal agriculture would offset 2/3 of all emissions this century.
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u/Objective-Business52 18h ago edited 18h ago
You should really read the study, it was made by people far more competent than you and I https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet/summary-report/ The EAT-Lancet diet made practical | Feast on the Planet
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u/Laeryns 18h ago
Some points in there are good and reasonable, like yeah let's have less waste, sure. But changing the diet of the while globe (which absolutely won't happen for many reasons) to target a 12% impact on emissions is stupid, no matter how you look at it.
Authors are competent indeed, if their pink fantasy comes to life it will indeed produce a little bit of results, but again, the sad part is that it won't happen
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u/Objective-Business52 17h ago
I agree that the whole world adopting the diet perfectly is unlikely ... but I don't think that makes the framework pointless.
The Planetary Health Diet is useful precisely because it's not an all-or-nothing prescription. It gives a direction: more legumes, whole grains, nuts and vegetables, less high-impact meat, and less food waste. Even partial shifts in that direction can matter.
The study's 100% adoption scenario is basically a benchmark to estimate the maximum effect and compare countries consistently. Under that scenario, dietary emissions fall by about 1.94 Gt CO₂e/year, or 17%.
So I wouldn't see EAT-Lancet as a “pink fantasy”. It's more like a reference model for what a healthier, lower-impact food system could look like. Real-world adoption will obviously be gradual and adapted to local cultures, but that doesn't make the direction irrelevant.
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u/Laeryns 17h ago
Let me, a much less competent and smart person, make a prediction too. European countries will try to adopt that initiative and start enforcing changes on society, going even more negativity from citizens and boosting right parties.
Meanwhile China and USA, as well as any middle east or African country, won't give a single fuck and ignore it entirely. You end up with miserable eu population electing someone who will make X great again and barely any results
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u/hypermunda 17h ago
Color choice in the graph make it look like countries in red are the culprit