A healthy diet, for people and the planet, would include a more varied menu of nut and legumes, whole grains and plenty of fruits and vegetables, with significantly less meat, dairy products and sugar.

That's the relatively straightforward message from the EAT-Lancet Commission, an independent scientific body working with the influential British medical journal. On Friday, it presented a major update to its 2019 report on healthy diets that are also good for the environment, findings which have been widely accepted by global health and environmental experts.

"Food systems generate roughly 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions," said Johan Rockström, commission co-chair and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, speaking in a media briefing earlier this week.

Rockström outlined new research from more than 35 countries and six continents showing that including healthy foods in dietary guidelines, tackling food loss and waste, choosing local products and shifting to sustainable agricultural practices could reduce stress on the environment and cut those emissions by more than half — and prevent up to 15 million premature deaths every year.

"By uniting the latest science on health and climate, it shows that what we put on our plates can save millions of lives, cut billions of tons of emissions, halt the loss of biodiversity and create a fairer food system," he said. 

'Coordinated campaign' against health and sustainability findings

Despite widespread acceptance of this "planetary health diet" — the commission's first report in 2019 has been cited more than 10,000 times — that message hasn't gone over well in online communities devoted to boosting meat-centered diets as natural, essential and environmentally friendly.

The original report faced a torrent of misinformation on social media, misleading or biased content that disparaged the findings. Climate-focused reporting platform DeSmog wrote in April that it had seen a document appearing to trace the backlash to global PR consultancy Red Flag, which represents the meat and dairy industry. DW contacted Red Flag for comment, but the agency did not respond before publication.

"Food is something people connect with," said Maddy Haughton-Boakes, a senior campaigner at Changing Markets Foundation, a Dutch NGO working to support solutions that benefit society and the environment. "Everybody has a very personal connection with food and what we eat, and people know that. And if you play to that individualism agenda, you can really rile people up and motivate people."

A new investigation by Changing Markets lays out how "industry-friendly scientists, doctors, health influencers, journalists and authors" connected with the meat industry took part in a "targeted and coordinated campaign" to derail the 2019 EAT-Lancet report and its health and sustainability research, with critics portraying it as being "dangerous, elitist and anti-science."

"At the time, a lot of the backlash was presented as organic," Haughton-Boakes told DW. "We know now that it wasn't organic."

She said their research showed how "mis-influencers" tagged and shared each other's content, using similar or identical wording and hashtags like #Yes2Meat, #MeatHeals #ClimateFoodFacts to tout the health and environmental benefits of meat. And, she added, amid the current geopolitical instability and soaring food prices, there have been signs in recent days that this latest report will face the same resistance.

The Changing Markets investigation said many of the people behind the 2019 campaign "are still active and engaging with each other, their reach has grown and the public acceptance or take-up of their ideas has increased." 

"The promotion of carnivore diets has shifted into the mainstream now," said Haughton-Boakes, highlighting the influence of manosphere podcasts and the "Make America Healthy Again" movement in the US under President Donald Trump. "Globally, there's this protein boom and idea that you have to consume vast amounts of meat [and] animal protein for your health."

Social media, AI helping to spread misinformation

Haughton-Boakes said the weakening of fact-checking units and safeguards against misleading information on social media services such as X, Instagram and Facebook over the last year have helped fuel misinformation. As has the rise of AI tools boosting the spread of fake news and convincing deepfake videos and images.

Writing for the Paris-based Geopolitical Studies Group, sociologist Jose Henrique Bortoluci and Emmanuel Guerin, a fellow at the European Climate Foundation, said the relative freedom of social media has fostered an environment in which climate disinformation has flourished.

"Opportunistic individuals take advantage of this environment to generate skepticism and spread misinformation. They have mastered the art of imitating 'expertise' or undermining it, exemplified by the rise of pseudo-experts and think tanks aimed at discrediting climate science," they wrote in July.

In an email to DW, Bortoluci stressed that social media platforms need to be regulated, as with broadcast media and advertising.

"There is no individual or institutional effort that can limit the spread of fake news and the advancement of disinformation campaigns if the platforms themselves are not co-responsible in tackling the problem," he said.

Taking back the 'emotional narrative'

"We all in the [EAT-Lancet] Commission share the same concern over this return… of mis- and disinformation, and denialism on climate science," Rockström told reporters earlier this week, in response to a DW question. But he felt the new report was ready to "meet that assault" with its "rigorous" global scientific assessment.

"We're not dictating any specific one-fit-for-all type of diet," he added, pushing back against a common misinterpretation of the 2019 EAT-Lancet report.

Walter C. Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, pointed out that the planetary health diet was similar to many traditional diets around the world.

Examples of this healthy meal plan will be displayed on the report website in a series of pictures, he said — an apparent effort to connect with people and take back what Bortoluci and Guerin called the "emotional narrative" highjacked by misinformation. 

"[The pictures] make the case that this is not a deprivation diet that we're talking about," said Willett. "This is something that could be delicious, aspirational and healthy."

Edited by: Tamsin Walker