Get To Know The Climatarian Diet, A Good Lifestyle For Health And Environmentally Friendly

Illustration of a climatarian diet (Unsplash/Yoav Aziz)

JAKARTA – Reducing your carbon footprint can be started by adjusting your eating patterns and menus. Lifestyle and diet are considered not only to achieve health. But also reduce the effects of climate change and improve the health of the living environment. This lifestyle is known as the climatarian diet.

The climatarian diet is carried out by emphasizing locally grown foods, reported by Health, Friday, March 25. By consuming food made from local plants, it is considered to contribute to protecting the environment.

This diet is not a traditional diet, but is dynamic. The reason is, the climatarian diet focuses on eating foods that do not contribute to environmental damage. This means that this diet is not difficult to follow because planning the meal menu is not straight, it just needs full awareness in sorting and choosing natural food products locally.

Illustration of a climatarian diet (Unsplash/Zae Schaeffer)

Climatarians need to be aware of how food is produced, processed, and transported. Thus, this diet avoids foods that require large amounts of natural resources, contribute to pollution, cause ocean acidification, emit greenhouse gases, and use excessive or non-biodegradable packaging.

According to a study published in 2019 in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it assessed 15 food groups. The assessment found that foods with the lowest environmental impact could reduce a person's risk of dying with either the disease or one or more chronic diseases such as heart disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and stroke.

Unlike the vegan or vegetarian diet, which both have a response to environmental changes. According to Cynthia Sass, MPH., RD., a dietitian and author of the book, the climatarian diet still consumes meat, but in minimal amounts. They believe that eliminating entire food groups can make it harder for many people to stick to the diet. It's just that they really consider the significant impact on the environment.

This means not only consuming the type of food ingredients, but also limiting foods that have a larger environmental footprint. Foods that are said to have minimal environmental footprint include nuts, seasonal local produce, whole grains, nuts, and mushrooms. Meanwhile, foods that should be restricted to a climatic diet such as red meat, dairy products, palm oil, sugar, and highly processed foods.