GAZETTE:We dont have to give up meat?
WILLETT: I co-chaired the Eat Lancet-Commission, and we did conclude that theres room for about two servings of animal-source foods per day, one being dairy and one being some combination of fish or poultry a couple of times a week, or some eggs, with red meat just once a week. People could become vegans, of course, if theyre careful about getting enough vitamin B12, but this does provide a lot of flexibility. Were quite off target at this point in time though, especially in the United States.
GAZETTE:How aligned are the goals of human health and sustainability as a planet?
WILLETT: There are no serious conflicts in that, very broadly, the healthiest diet for humans will be a diet that is healthy for the planet. But there is this divergence in that you can have a diet that is relatively healthy for the planet, but very bad for humans. And thats the diet that is low in animal source foods but high in starch, especially if its refined starch, and sugar. We often call that a poverty diet in that the cheapest sources of calories are starch and sugar. That has a light footprint on the planet, but its not healthy.
GAZETTE:Would you tell us about your current research?
WILLETT: Were working on a lot of fronts so I will just briefly talk about our long-term cohort studies. This is the Nurses Health Study and the follow-up study. Weve been following over 250,000 people starting in 1980. Were able to look at the long-term consequences of diet, and we are really starting to see some things that we didnt see in the first couple of decades. We now see that the development of diseases like cancer occurs over many decades. What girls consumed during childhood turns out to be more important for their [risk of] breast cancer at age 60 than what they were eating at age 50. It really does highlight the importance of paying attention to what we feed our kids in schools as well as at home.
GAZETTE:What should we be eating?
WILLETT: Variety, but there are some parts of that are important to include in that variety. We do see, for example, that the dark orange and green leafy vegetables like carrots and greens are important for helping reduce breast cancer risk, and the cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage are related to lower risk of breast cancer later in life. For cognitive function, it looks like including tomato products, like tomato sauce, is important. Its not that theres one magic bullet there, but making sure we include these kinds of vegetables is important.
GAZETTE:And is such a diet sustainable?
WILLETT: In general vegetables have a light- to moderate-impact environmental footprint, but it varies tremendously. If we produce them in California and ship them across the country, there is an appreciable-impact carbon footprint, not from producing the vegetables per se but from the process of keeping the cold chain. Some colleagues at Michigan have shown that by very simple low technology, like greenhouses where they dont use fossil fuels for heat, they can produce greens pretty much year-round in Michigan with about 1/10 of the environmental footprint compared to those that are produced and shipped from California. So its not just what we eat, but how its produced.
GAZETTE:Does that mean we should be eating local?
WILLETT: All else being equal. But if you have a greenhouse in New England thats burning a lot of fossil fuel to produce tomatoes in January, that isnt necessarily going to be good. We do have pretty much every day whats called a fruit train come up the East Coast from Florida to the Boston markets. Were taking advantage of the warmth and sunlight in Florida, and train transportation is pretty inexpensive, so thats probably better than putting a couple of bushels of fruit in your pickup in Western Massachusetts and driving to Boston. We want to simplify things, but not oversimplify things.
Interview was edited for clarity and length.
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Walter Willett looks at what's healthy for you and the planet - Harvard Gazette
