In a recent scientific journal entry, two leading plant-based healthcare professionals highlight the significant opportunity that plant-based diets present in addressing global challenges such as poor health, biodiversity loss, social injustice, and the climate crisis. Dr. Shireen Kassam and Dr. Laura Jane Smith emphasize that promoting plant-based diets could help mitigate the interconnected crises driven by the current food system.

The authors recommend that healthcare leaders support the normalization of default plant-based options, promote the benefits of plant-based foods, offer plant-based catering for events and meetings, and lobby decision makers to support a plant-based food system. Embracing plant-based diets is seen as an ethical imperative with benefits spanning individual health, environmental sustainability, equitable resource distribution, and global health justice. The study found that well-balanced plant-based diets could help people with cardiometabolic conditions live longer and that emphasizing plant-based meals in schools and hospitals could save money and promote sustainability. Promoting plant-based diets within healthcare systems can lead the way towards a more sustainable and ethical food system.