Replacing red meat with forage fish such as herring, sardines and anchovies could save 750,000 lives a year and help tackle the climate crisis, research suggests.

There is growing evidence that red meat consumption is associated with increased risk of human disease and significant harm to the environment. In contrast, forage fish are nutritious, environmentally friendly, and the most abundant fish species in the world’s oceans.

While research has shown the benefits of forage fish, it was previously unclear how much the global disease burden would be reduced when fish was used instead of red meat. Now, a team of researchers from Japan and Australia has conducted the largest analysis of its kind, covering data from more than 130 countries, to find out.

Researchers have found that replacing red meat with forage fish could prevent 750,000 deaths a year and significantly reduce the prevalence of disability due to diet-related diseases.

Adopting this kind of diet could be particularly beneficial for low- and middle-income countries, where these fish are cheap and abundant and are particularly hard-hit by heart disease, the researchers added.

“To improve human health and the health of the planet, we need to limit the consumption of red meat and move towards healthy and environmentally friendly foods,” they write in the journal BMJ Global Health. . “Compared to red meat, seafood not only provides higher concentrations of essential nutrients, but also protects against diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

“Our study shows that adopting forage fish as a replacement for red meat could potentially have significant public health benefits, particularly in terms of reducing ischemic heart disease. (0.5 to 0.75 million deaths from diet-related NCDs could be avoided worldwide).

Feed fish is rich in calcium and vitamin B12, as well as omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which can protect against coronary heart disease. It also has the lowest carbon footprint of any animal food source, the researchers said.

However, currently three-quarters of the feed fish catch is crushed and processed into fishmeal and fish oil, and these products are primarily used in fish farming.

The researchers modeled four scenarios, each representing a different pattern of forage fish allocation on a global scale. They used his 2050 red meat consumption projections for 137 countries, as well as historical data on forage fish catches in marine habitats.

Globally, this approach could prevent as many as 750,000 deaths from diet-related diseases by 2050 and potentially save up to 15 million years of life lived with disability.

The researchers acknowledged that the limited supply of feed fish is not enough to replace all red meat. But replacing them could still significantly reduce the global disease burden.

“Our analysis suggests that forage fish is a promising alternative to red meat,” the researchers wrote. “This study points to the need for fish-based food policy guidelines and nutrition-sensitive policies to pay more attention to the composition of future fish intake and promote consumption of forage fish.”