Climate change could kill more than 500,000 people a year worldwide by 2050 by making diets less healthy, new research reveals. The study published on the 2nd of March in the journal Lancet assessed the impact of climate change on diet composition and bodyweight estimating the number of deaths these two factors will cause for 155 countries. “We looked at the health effects of changes in agricultural production that are likely to result from climate change and found that even modest reductions in the availability of food per person could lead to changes in the energy content and composition of diets, and these changes will have major consequences for health,” said Dr Marco Springmann from the University of Oxford who led the study. The researchers found that unless action is taken to reduce global emissions, climate change could lead to average per-person reductions in food availability of 3.2% (99 kcal per day), in fruit and vegetable intake of 4.0% (14.9g per day), and red meat consumption of 0.7% (0.5g per day). The researchers predicted that these changes in fruit and vegetable intake could be responsible for 534,000 climate-related deaths, far exceeding the health benefits of reduced red meat consumption which will prevent 29,000 deaths. The authors said even small changes in diet can quickly add up to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The study projects that reduced fruit and vegetable intake could cause twice as many deaths as under-nutrition by 2050. The countries that are likely to be worst affected are low- and middle-income countries, mainly those in the Western Pacific region (264,000 additional deaths) and Southeast Asia (164,000), with almost three-quarters of all climate-related deaths expected to occur in China (248,000) and India (136,000). But the study also found that cutting emissions could have great health benefits, reducing the number of climate-related deaths by 29-71% depending on their stringency. According to Dr Springmann, “Adaptation efforts need to be scaled up rapidly. Public-health programmes aimed at preventing and treating diet and weight-related risk factors, such as increasing fruit and vegetable intake, must be strengthened as a matter of priority to help mitigate climate-related health effects.” (ab)