Saturday, May 26, 2007

Climate change will bring menu change

Please, not lamb or chicken!
clipped from www.smh.com.au

Dietary guidelines should take into account the levels of nutrients needed for optimal health while maintaining the natural environmental systems required to produce our food, according to expert advice.

The recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that in the next 20 years, crop yields could decrease by up to 30 per cent in some parts of Asia.

"We can't just assume that the world is going to continue to produce the types of food that are the preferred sources of nutrients for practising dietitians," Professor McMichael said.

He said there was a growing global interest in finding ways to achieve nutritionally sound diets, based on locally-produced food.

"We have been kidding ourselves for a long time that the costs of carting food around the world are negligible when in fact …that is a true environmental cost that the world cannot afford," he
said.

Professor Tony McMichael is the director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University.

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