Overall, we need to return to real food, as local as possible, and stop wasting so much of it. Globally, we waste about a third of our food which is borderline criminal considering nearly one billion people go to sleep hungry every night. In addition, processed food is high in sugar and low in nutrients whilst at the same time being based on large ecologically barren monocultures wrapped into disgusting levels of plastic. As far as protein goes there are two important points to make here but much more can be said.

1. Either reduce your animal protein intake and change to plant based proteins (lentils, chickpeas, nuts etc.), and/or
2. Choose your animal based proteins more carefully.

The EAT Lancet report indicated that food production is responsible for up to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of freshwater use. Foods sourced from animals, especially red meat and grain fed livestock, have relatively high environmental footprints per serving compared to other food groups, impacting greenhouse gas emissions, land use and biodiversity loss.  Replacing 100% of beef intake with poultry reduced mean dietary greenhouse gas emissions by 35·7%. When replacing all beef, pork, or poultry intake with plant-protein foods the greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 49·6%, mean Healthy Eating Index increased by 8·7%, and dietary costs decreased by 10·5%.  When choosing meat, the EAT Lancet Commission recommends sourcing meat from farmers that practice regenerative agriculture (and I will add permaculture in here too). This type of farming contributes to carbon storage in the soil, keeps water away from pollutants, and provides room for local biodiversity to flourish.  Farmers like Joel Salatin have developed techniques that treat the animals well in free range and grass fed ways but also builds top soil (which sinks carbon into the soil and hence can act as a net benefit), improves water tables, regenerates biodiversity and at the same time provide meat that is healthier with higher omega 3 rations, higher range of antioxidants as they are feeding on more varied grasses, improved fat profiles and no antibiotics or growth hormones. To be clear though, permaculture and regenerative agriculture practices, like agroforestry, do not always require livestock.  There are also feral animals like rabbits, deer, camels and pigs that are ecologically destructive, so whilst these products are available at specialist butchers, they are also not easy to obtain en masse.  I often get asked about fish and whilst some locally caught thriving species is fine, I stay away from tuna and other similar species as the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that almost 80% of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted, or in a state of collapse. The difficulty with this is that regenerative agriculture and permaculture sources of meat can be more expensive and are not common with 95-99% of livestock being factory-farmed or intensively raised.

Overall, considering the vested interests from both the meat and livestock industry and the grain industry, it can be very hard to get an unbiased picture of the best way to eat for both environment and health.  Both industries directly or indirectly produce evidence to support their industries.  So, my fallible and not 100% confident interpretation of the reoccurring themes from all the sources (including meat and vegan proponents) I have reviewed is as follows: massively reduce food waste and intensive farming practices such as confined animal feeding operations and intensive grain monocultures and significantly increase consumption of regenerative farming produce, support reforestation programs, and eat local and organic if possible (though even these points are not entirely agreed upon).  The produce from regenerative agriculture should be predominantly whole food and plants, but can also include regenerative and grazing crop rotation livestock, especially from land not suitable for crops.  From here it is easy enough to then practice what diet biopsychosocially-culturally-spiritually suits an individual best, whether that be vegan, vegetarian, Mediterranean, pegan, paleo, low-carb or ketogenic, as it is likely the plates would look surprisingly similar; about 50%+ above ground plants and the remaining 50% whole food and healthy forms of plant or animal protein, fat and/or whole-grains, all sourced from regenerative farming practices.

Whilst this is not a complete list nor a complete examination of the nuances of each point, it is a starting point and I hope it helps to heal you, your patients and our beautiful natural world.