Scarborough et al., 2010
Scarborough, P., Clarke, D., Wickramasinghe, K., & Rayner, M. (2010). Modelling the health impacts of the diets described in ‘Eating the Planet’ published by Friends of the Earth and Compassion in World Farming. British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group.
Model detailed here: Modelling the health impact of environmentally sustainable dietary scenarios in the UK | European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
By reducing the percentage of meat eaten from 29% of calories to 13% or 6% for fair less meat
Modelled the impacts of people adopting (Erb et al., 2010) and found that if people in the UK consumed the Less Meat diet then (under the most conservative assumptions about food waste) 32,000 deaths would be averted or delayed each year. 26,000 of these deaths would be from cardiovascular disease (CVD, i.e. coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke) and 6,000 would be from cancer. Furthermore costs to the NHS would be reduced by £0.85bn if the Less Meat diet were achieved. The equivalent figures for the Fair Less Meat diet would be 45,000 lives averted or delayed each year (36,000 from CVD and 9,000 from cancer) and £1.2bn in NHS costs.
Methods
- Used Monte Carlo
- used meta analysis studies of disease outcomes to estimate it. Deaths from CVD (CHD and stroke) and 10 forms of cancer: oesophagus, colorectum, gallbladder, pancreas, breast, endometrium, kidney, mouth/larynx/pharynx, stomach, lung.
Critique
For example, the World Cancer Research Fund describes the causal link between consumption of red meat and processed meat with colorectal cancer as ‘convincing’, however this association is not included in the DIETRON model as the association cannot be converted into a change in the nutritional quality of the diet.
The health outcome of nutritional inadequacy is generally disability whereas the health outcomes assessed by the DIETRON model are deaths from chronic disease. Nevertheless the effects of the Eat the Planet diets on the adequacy
of levels of vitamin and minerals in the UK is likely to be small and so the effects of these diets on diseases of nutritional adequacy are also likely to be small
They do not take into account any future trends in mortality or costs associated with treating different diseases. They are also based on estimates of the amount of money that is currently spent on CVD and cancer by the NHS and not all of these costs will be avoidable (for example some of the costs will be for continued running of specialist cardiac centres, which would not be reduced if the number of cardiovascular events were to fall).
Assumptions
Assumes that meat can be reduced while maintaining levels of Iron calcium, niacin and other vits and minerals that we get a lot of from meat. They claim they could not find any meta analyses, but this is 2010. They argue its less of a problem because deficiencies typically result in disability not death, but not sure that makes sense.
It also assumes that dietary changes are achieved by all individuals within a population shifting dietary patterns in a similar way, and that the impacts of changes in the nutritional quality of the diet on health outcomes follow a dose‐response relationship at the individual‐level.
the DIETRON model does not estimate the impact of changes in the diet on
diseases of nutritional inadequacy (e.g. anaemia from low iron intakes) that may be a result of a
change in the consumption of meat and dairy products.