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Access to food and water is already one of the biggest global challenges. Major cities such as Sana’a and São Paulo are at high risk of running out of water. Desertification is wiping out close to 100 million hectares of arable land each year. At the same time, as touted by the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, “Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth.”

I couldn’t agree more. If we as a species can improve our eating habits, it is still possible to reverse the alarming and expensive increases in diet-related diseases (e.g., heart disease, strokes, diabetes, obesity), shift the frightening excesses of environmental degradation (e.g., greenhouse gases, excessive cropland and freshwater, and nitrogen and phosphorous application), and promote the physiological health that increases the likelihood of happier and more productive lives.

Unfortunately, global trends are continuing to move quickly in the wrong direction. No region in the world is anywhere close to achieving sustainable, healthy diets. On average, Africa and Asia come closest but with huge disparities in their populations. The worst region, North America, is producing more than six times the greenhouse gases and exceeding standards for most other environmental indicators by 200 percent.

The global community has started multiple activities to address these challenges, from global conversations and investments to country- and city-level experiments. What remains is the need for action at the grassroots level. All of us need to become better educated about the urgency of the issues and the ways that we can become part of the solution. What does a “planetary health diet” look like? How easy is it to create one? How can we incorporate these values and habits into our lives? We propose three actions we can take as individuals to improve the global balance in health, nutrition, and climate over the next 25 years:

1. Think in terms of combinations of food. Often when we think about eating better, we focus on simplistic guidelines such as “no more than [fill in the blank] calories per day,” “stay away from [fill in the blank],” or “eat more [fill in the blank].” Instead, we recommend thinking about a approximate target for daily caloric intake that is right for your body and then the combinations of food that improve nutrition and environmental sustainability. For example, the EAT-Lancet Commission recommends that the quantity of food we eat on average should be 23 percent vegetables, 19 percent dairy, 18 percent whole grains, 16 percent protein, 15 percent fruit, 4 percent fat, 4 percent starch, and 2 percent sugar. And in terms of the breakdown of proteins, the Commission recommends 36 percent legumes, 24 percent nuts, 14 percent poultry, 13 percent fish, 7 percent beef/lamb/pork, and 6 percent eggs.

Obviously, these specific combinations are quite controversial. People who ascribe to specific eating philosophies (e.g., vegetarianism, veganism, paleo, Mediterranean diet) would take issue with the specific combinations. Nevertheless, whether you have a strong opinion about certain food groups, it is helpful to think about overall nutritional (e.g., the combination of protein and starch in a particular meal) and environmental implications of those foods. For example, among nuts, cashews take more than 12 times the amount of water than groundnuts. Similarly, per unit, groundnuts have more than 20 times the amount of protein than cashews.

2. Think about how foods are produced. It is important not only to think about what foods we eat but also about how they are produced. For example, it is no surprise that eating 100 grams of root vegetables or legumes is better nutritionally and environmentally than 100 grams of hyper-processed boxed or frozen food. Our bodies are not designed to process the chemical engineering that is the basis for shelf-stable, dopamine-exploding, hyper-processed foods.

But hyper-processed foods are not the only antagonists for a healthy and environmentally sustainable world. It is also important to understand how less processed and whole foods are produced. Irrespective of one’s food philosophy, it is much healthier and environmentally sustainable to eat grass-fed cows, antibiotic-free chicken, and organic grains than cows fed with corn, chicken jacked with aminoglycosides, or wheat sprayed with synthetic fertilizers. In the short run, these short cuts offer bigger yields and feed more people, however the long-term consequences can have hugely negative effects on health, the quality of land and drinking water, and longer-term yields.

3. Keep thinking! The challenges of nutritional health and environmental sustainability are going to become even more acute and visible over the next decade and century. At the same time, research about the relationship between nutrition and the environment will also continue to improve, as well technologies that improve food yields in better ways and afford healthier options (for example, through hydroponics). However, even with the best technological advances, we will have stay diligent and proactive in thinking about food options. We also need to remember that decisions about personal nutrition and environmental sustainability will never be in complete harmony. It is therefore important to continue reviewing and updating decisions about eating, weighing the tradeoffs, and being deliberate—though never perfect—in our decisions.

Please reach out if you would like to join a more focused conversation about balancing nutrition and environmental sustainability!