INDIA SHOWS WHY THE GLOBAL SHIFT TO PLANT-BASED DIETS IS DANGEROUS By Sylvia Karpagam, Frédéric Leroy and Martin Cohen DECEMBER 4, 2019 https://www.ozy.com/around-the-world/india-shows-why-the-global-shift-to-plant-based-diets-is-dangerous/250958/ WHY YOU SHOULD CARE? What works in the West isn’t necessarily good for developing countries.
Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission released its global report on nutrition and called for a global shift to a more plant-based diet and for “substantially reducing consumption of animal source foods.” In countries like India, that call could become a tool to aggravate an already fraught political situation and stress already undernourished populations.
A diet directed at the affluent West fails to recognize that in low-income countries undernourished children are known to benefit from the consumption of milk and other animal source foods, improving anthropometric indexes and cognitive functions, while reducing the prevalence of nutritional deficiencies as well as morbidity and mortality.
Or that, in India, bone fracture and shorter heights have been associated with lower milk consumption. Importantly, traditional livestock gets people through difficult seasons, prevents malnutrition in impoverished communities and provides economic security.
Vocal critics of the food processing industry and food fortification strategies, such as India’s Right to Food campaign, have been left out of the debate along with the National Institute of Nutrition, the 100-year-old government nutrition research body whose research points in favor of animal source foods. But the most blatant omission may as well be the fact that India’s farmers were conspicuously absent.
What is conveniently being ignored are the environmental and economic cost of shifting metric tons of micronutrients from Western countries on a permanent basis while at the same time destroying local food systems. It’s a model fraught with danger for future generations.