Weight Control 🌵and Lifestyle Medicine🌿 Part 8- Climate change

 

Climate change 🌦 is one of the largest environmental influences on the weather patterns that we experience globally. With the rising carbon dioxide, methane and Nitrous oxide reflect this dilemma. The rising temperature of the sea globally is part of these statistics. Human health can be impacted in many ways, and we will look at these influences. Good weight control relies on many environmental influences, including: 

·       Access to sufficient fresh fruit 🍎 🫐 🥝, vegetables 🍅 🍆 🥦, grains 🌽 🍞 🍜, legumes 🫘, nuts, seeds, and other whole foods.

·       Sufficient water 🫗 for drinking and growing plant foods 🪴 and livestock.

·       A balanced ⚖️environmental temperature, free of significantly increased or decreased temperatures.

·       Affordability of fresh food and water, essential for good nutrition and enough food.

·       Freedom from acceleration of disease due to climate change. Examples are disease and death associated with diarrhoea from drought, lung diseases from bushfires♨️ and diseases associated with contamination with flooding. Changing levels of humidity can cause more danger from diseases associated with mosquito bites (i.e.: Malaria and Dengue fever). Increased allergen related diseases, including Asthma,

·       Reduced greenhouse emissions are necessary for weight control globally and with from 2012-2017 16 billion tons of greenhouse gases were produced by our global food production facilitation. This can mean more herbicides, pesticides 🩻 and fertilizers adding to our exposure to chemicals and potential diseases including cancer via contamination of food and water.

What can we do about this? As a self-responsibility and influence on our friends, family 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦, work associates and politicians 🧑‍💼, there is much to be done.  Let’s consider some examples. It is worth considering the cost of our large reliance of livestock and dairy products for our diet. There is a huge cost of feeding livestock for meat and dairy production. The food and Agriculture organisation of the United Nations estimate this cost to be approximately $1.4 Trillion. This is only an estimate. We must consider that the need for more land and stock feeds continues to climb as the world population grows. Livestock also emit greenhouse gases, and methane is the main one. Methane has a higher capacity to add to global warming than carbon dioxide. 

To consider cycling 🚴🏽and walking🚶🏽 instead of burning fossil fuels 🚗 and causing more carbon emissions adds to not only benefits for our health and weight control, but also for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Considering a whole food plant based diet (WFPBD) as our main foundation will help to lower the levels of global warming. This relationship has been briefly considered here, but largely lies outside the scope of this article. I believe we need to be ambassadors for change and make submissions to parliamentary leaders to allow better access to fresh fruit and vegetables and to allow equity in the availability of more fresh nutritious whole foods. With the huge cost of renting and buying of houses and units for shelter globally, it is becoming extremely difficult to pay huge prices for whole foods including fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Many of the vitamins, phytonutrients, carbohydrates, proteins and healthy fats available in these foods must be regularly consumed throughout the day to have an optimum influence on our health, to allow our best opportunity to have good weight control and lower risk of chronic disease development. Being able to afford heating and cooling for our houses allows lower exposure to the risk of diseases that impact on weight control, such as Type 2 Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stress, anxiety and depression. Reducing meat consumption (especially high fat red meats) helps to lower your risk of chronic disease and lowers emissions of methane. Approximately one third of the food in the world ends up as waste, becomes landfill, and increases methane production and increases global warming. By eating a WFPBD 🎋, you are showing your support for reducing climate change, and making a huge contribution to your weight control. This will lead to influencing your children, their friends, your friends and together we can reduce Global warming impact on this beautiful home 🏡and planet we call earth🌎.

References 

1. Qi Zhao, Pei Yu, Rahini Mahendran, Wenzhong Huang, Yuan Gao, Zhengyu Yang, Tingting Ye, Bo Wen, Yao Wu, Shanshan Li, Yuming Guo, Global climate change and human health: Pathways and possible solutions, Eco-Environment & Health, Volume 1, Issue 2, 2022, Pages 53-62, ISSN 2772-9850. 

 2. Tiu, W.E. Wahid, W.Y. Andriani, Mirnawati, R. Tosepu, Literature review: impact of temperature and rainfall on incident malaria, IOP Conf. Ser. Earth Environ. Sci. 755 (2021), 012084. 

3. Gomez-Zavaglia A, Mejuto JC, Simal-Gandara J. Mitigation of emerging implications of climate change on food production systems. Food Res Int. 2020 Aug;134:109256. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2020.109256. Epub 2020 Apr 23. Erratum in: Food Res Int. 2020 Nov;137:109554. PMID: 32517948; PMCID: PMC7176580. 

4. Montzka, S., Dlugokencky, E. & Butler, J. Non-CO₂ greenhouse gases and climate change. Nature 476, 43–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10322 

5.Lowe, M., 2014. Obesity and climate change mitigation in Australia: overview and analysis of policies with co‐benefits. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 38(1), pp.19-24. 

6.Stehfest, E., Bouwman, L., Van Vuuren, D.P., Den Elzen, M.G., Eickhout, B. and Kabat, P., 2009. Climate benefits of changing diet. Climatic change, 95(1-2), pp.83-102.