Western food
The spread of Western eating habits around the world is bad for human health and for the environment. Those findings come from a new report in the journal Nature.
There are ways to solve this diet-health-environment problem. But they will require a change in eating habits. And what we eat can be a product of culture, personal taste, price and ease.
David Tilman is a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota. In the study, he examined information from 100 countries to identify what people ate and how diet affected health.
Mr. Tilman noted a movement beginning in the 1960s. He found that as nations industrialized, population increased and earnings rose. More people began to adopt what has been called the Western diet.
The Western diet is high in refined, or processed, sugar, fat, oil and meat. By eating these foods, people began to get fatter -- and sicker.
"The excess, let us say, in the 15 richest nations of the world, right now is on the order of about 400 or 500 extra calories a day that are eaten beyond what people need, and that leads people to gain weight."
David Tillman says overweight people are at greater risk for non-infectious diseases like diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.
"Diabetes is shooting to very high rates in the United States and across Europe. Heart disease is a major cause of mortality in the Western countries. Unfortunately when people become industrialized, if they adopt this Western diet, they are going to have these same health impacts, and in some cases if you are Asian, you have them more severely than even happens in the West."
China, he says, is an example where the number of diabetes cases has jumped.
"... from less than one percent to 10 percent of the population having diabetes as they began to industrialize over a 20-year period. And that has not leveled off yet. That is still going up. And that is happening all across the world, in Mexico, in Nigeria and so on, just nation after nation."
And, a diet bad for human beings, it seems, is also bad for the environment. As the world's population grows, experts say more forests and tropical areas will become farmland for crops or grasslands for grazing cattle. These areas will be needed to meet the increasing demand for food.
"We are likely to have more greenhouse gas released in the future from agriculture because of this dietary shift than all the greenhouse gas that right now comes out of all the cars, and all of the airplanes, boats and ships, all forms of transportation. So our change in diet is likely to be worse for the world for climate warming than all the transportation sources we use right now."
Mr. Tilman calls the link between diet, the environment and human health, "a trilemma." This is a play on the word "dilemma" -- a problem offering a difficult choice. He says one possible solution is leaving the Western diet behind.
I'm Anna Matteo.
这里是美国之音慢速英语健康报道。
西式的饮食习惯在世界各地的传播对人类的健康和环境不利。这些发现来自《自然》杂志的一份新报告。
现在有各种办法来解决这一饮食健康环境问题。但是他们需要改变饮食习惯。而我们吃什么是文化、个人口味、价格以及易用性的产物。
David Tilman是明尼苏达大学的生态学教授。在这项研究中，他考察了来自于100个国家的信息以确定人们吃了什么，以及饮食如何影响健康。
Tilman先生指出了始于20世纪60年代的一项变化。他发现，随着国家工业化、人口增长和收入增长，越来越多人开始采用所谓的西方饮食。
西方饮食富含精制的糖、脂肪、油脂以及肉类。食用这些食物的人们开始变得更胖更不健康。
“我们可以说，在全球15个最富有的国家中，人们目前每天食用的超出人体所需的过量卡路里在400到500这个量级，而这导致人们发胖。”
Tilman说，超重者患上糖尿病、心脏病和某些癌症这类非感染性疾病的风险更大。
“糖尿病在美国和欧洲各地的发病率非常高。心脏病是西方国家人口死亡的重要原因。不幸的是，当人们逐步进入工业化，如果他们也采用这种西方饮食，他们就会受到同样的健康影响。并且在某些情况下，亚洲人受到的健康影响会比西方人更为严重。”
他说，中国就是一个例子，该国的糖尿病数量就已上升。
“在中国逐步工业化的这20年间，糖尿病发病率从不到1%上升到了10%。而且该发病率尚未稳定，还在继续上升。这一切正在世界各地，在墨西哥、尼日利亚等国家逐一发生。
而且，对人类有害的饮食看来也对环境有害。专家们表示，随着世界人口的增长，越来越多森林和热带地区将变成耕作的农田和放牧的牧场。这些地区将用来满足不断上涨的食物需求。
“未来农业可能会排放更多的温室气体，因为这种饮食比目前汽车、飞机、船舶等各种形式的交通工具所排放的所有温室气体转移更快。所以我们的饮食变化对世界气候变暖的影响比我们目前使用的所有交通资源要更恶劣。”
Tilman先生称饮食、环境和人类健康之间的联系是“三难”。三难是基于两难的一种说法。两难是指面临艰难选择的难题。
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