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. 2020 May 1;150(5):985-988.
doi: 10.1093/jn/nxaa020.

The EAT-Lancet Commission's Dietary Composition May Not Prevent Noncommunicable Disease Mortality

Francisco J Zagmutt  1 , Jane G Pouzou  1 , Solenne Costard  1
Affiliations

The EAT-Lancet Commission's Dietary Composition May Not Prevent Noncommunicable Disease Mortality

Francisco J Zagmutt et al. J Nutr. .

Abstract

The recently published EAT-Lancet Commission report on dietary impacts on the environment suggested that their proposed diet could prevent more than 10 million annual premature mortalities from noncommunicable diseases globally. The report did not meet standards for transparency and replicability, nor did it fully account for statistical uncertainty. Our attempt to replicate the mortality calculations for the United States revealed flaws in the assumptions and methods used to estimate the avoided mortalities. After correcting some calculation errors and fully accounting for uncertainty in the avoided mortalities, the mortality reduction effect of the EAT-Lancet proposed diet in the USA is no greater than the impact of energy consumption changes that would prevent under-weight, over-weight, and obesity alone. As our findings call into question the global conclusions of the EAT-Lancet report, futher independent validation is needed before it can be used to inform dietary guidelines.

Keywords: EAT-Lancet Commission; Monte Carlo simulation; dietary recommendation; planetary health diet; stochastic modeling.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Distributions of avoided mortalities for 2030 in the United States from the reference (or flexitarian) diet compared with the baseline (business as usual) diet (lightest gray), with added uncertainty and corrected risk ratios. Avoided mortality from elimination of underweight, overweight, and obesity (darkest gray) in the reference (or flexitarian) diet was compared with the reported distribution of overall avoided mortalities in the United States (medium gray) from Springmann et al., 2018 (2).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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