Climate Change’s Existential Threat to the Mediterranean Diet

For the thirty years since Harvard “discovered” how people living around the Mediterranean Sea eat and how well they live, there has been a focused effort to bring the benefits of their diet to more people.

The expansive PREDIMED (Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea) study found that the main benefits, including reduced instances of cardiovascular disease and all causes of mortality, came from having a diet rich in olives, olive oil, and tree nuts and, to a lesser extent, avoiding a host of less healthy foods.

These ingredients may hold the key to a healthier diet and a longer, healthful lifespan. But the aim to expand the number of people eating them is now facing severe headwinds—and very hot ones at that.

Climate change doesn’t discriminate, not even when it comes to foods favored by nutritionists—like olives and nuts—as well as some of my perennial favorite beverages like wine, coffee, and cocoa, all of which are facing declining yields. Wealthier consumers feel the pain of higher prices, but that pales in comparison to those who can no longer afford their traditional foods and to the impact climate change is having on our environment.

The benefits of plant-forward diets, like the Mediterranean diet, are well documented. Diets that have long been recognized as some of the world’s healthiest—generally lower in animal products and especially red meat—are also better for the environment.

Nearly a decade ago, Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition studies at Stanford Medical School’s Prevention Research Center, and I did one of the first large-scale population analyses concerning the environmental impacts of making a moderate shift in animal protein intake. We found it would substantially contribute to national and global carbon reduction goals in ways that were less costly and more beneficial (to our health) than greening the energy industry and upgrading buildings and houses. Those findings have been reaffirmed in hundreds of studies since.

A Clear, Present Threat

The areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea comprise the largest region in the world with the specific type of climate needed to produce olives, almonds, and a handful of other crops that make up the Mediterranean-style eating pattern. There are only four other regions in the world that support this Mediterranean type of agriculture: coastal California, central Chile, the Western Cape of South Africa, and western and southern Australia.

These regions have a climate characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, allowing for agricultural production to emphasize orchard farming, which includes output like citrus, olives, almonds, figs, and viticulture (i.e., wine). Mediterranean growing regions, which have one of the least common climate types in the world, feed the world’s demand for these key agricultural products.

But all these growing regions are suffering from multi-year droughts and, in recent years, fires. A shortage of water alone can reduce the productivity of the trees for the rest of their lifespan.

The nutrition community’s work to promote healthier diets is more important than ever. But in doing so, we need to take changes in how the world produces food into consideration. Likely permanent changes in climate and growing conditions mean we can’t all eat like we live in the Mediterranean.

Based on trending data, it looks like a challenging future for Mediterranean growing regions where the impacts of climate change, drought, and related pestilence are likely to persist.

The larger change to how we go about our work—bringing dietary advice and food technology together—is that we can no longer promote a diet that relies on just a handful of “superfoods.”

The increasing volatility of both weather and the harvest means food professionals have to grow increasingly nimble in developing products based on the ingredients we think will be available, actively manage supply chains to grow and source from regions that look to have favorable weather in any given season, and advance technologies for preserving and extending the benefits of foods to help us through a bad harvest.ft

The opinions expressed in Dialogue are those of the author.