IEA reacts to the EAT-Lancet report outlining their dietary prescriptions for the world

17 Jan 2019 09:08 AM

The ‘EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health’ launches its dietary prescription for the world’s 7.6 billion people in Oslo this week, kicking off a jet-setting tour of no fewer than 35 launch events around the world.

The committee has been preparing their dietary plan for three years. It includes radical new nutritional targets, including demands that people should:

Under the plan, people would consume almost EIGHTEEN times as much dry beans, soy, and nuts (125g) as beef and lamb (7g), and get 27 times more calories from grains (811kcal) than from beef, lamb, and pork combined (30kcal).

To comply with EAT-Lancet’s quarter-ouncer diet, the UK would all have to cut meat consumption by 80 per cent. As this will not be achieved voluntarily, the committee calls on politicians to move away from “soft end of the policy ladder” and instead work to “eliminate choice”. They want more taxes on food and more advertising restrictions. They also propose “rationing on a population scale” and the “banning and pariah status of key products”. In wealthy countries such as Britain, they say “a priority is to offer less than what is currently offered by reducing portions, choice, and packaging.”

Responding to the report, Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs said:

“They say ‘you are what you eat’ and that must be true, because this is nuts. Most people will look at these demands – concocted by activist-academics and taxpayer-funded UN bureaucrats – and laugh, but I welcome this report because it reveals the full agenda of nanny state campaigners. They are making no secret of their desire to tax and ban their way towards a near-vegan diet for the world’s population.

“The potent combination of nanny state campaigners, militant vegetarians and environmental activists poses a real and present danger to a free society. Their desire to limit people to eating one tenth of a sausage a day leaves us in no doubt that we are dealing with fanatics. They say they want to save the planet but it is not clear which planet are they on.”

Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems