Hannah Ritchie Profile picture
Jul 12, 2021 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Food is about more than calories: we need a wide range of nutrients, vitamins & minerals.

A healthy diet is more than 4 times the cost of a basic, calorie-sufficient one.

As a result, three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

My latest post: ourworldindata.org/diet-affordabi…
You can get calories in cheaply if you rely on staple foods like cereals & starchy roots.

Across the world, the cheapest calorie-sufficient diet costs about $1 per day.

Unfortunately hundreds of millions still go without.

1/
'Healthy' diets that meet nutritional guidelines are much more expensive because they contain a wide variety of foods.

Costs around 4x as much in most countries.

Three billion people cannot afford this even if they spend most of their income on food.

2/
We can put the cost of healthy diets in perspective by putting this cost on top of the income distribution.

The blue boxes are the median income in each country. Pink line is cost of healthy diet.

In many countries, cost of a healthy diet is higher than the median income.

3/
Ending hunger (in terms of calories) is essential. But this is just the first basic step towards providing a nutritious diet for all.

If a healthy diet is to be achievable for everyone we need much more growth for people at the mid-to-low end of the income distribution.

4/
This work is based on the affordability of diets work by @wamasters & colleagues in prep for the UN FAO. You find their work here: sites.tufts.edu/foodpricesforn…

and here:
fao.org/3/cb2431en/cb2…

5/
You can explore this dataset on diet affordability in our new Food Prices Data Explorer: ourworldindata.org/explorers/food…

/end

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More from @_HannahRitchie

Sep 14, 2023
I've heard several people say that renewables are not driving an "energy transition". It's really just an "energy addition".

This makes it sound like fossil fuels have been business-as-usual, and we've stuck renewables on top.

I think there is a better way of framing this...🧵
In rich countries it really is an "energy transition".

Renewables are replacing fossil fuels in the electricity grid.

And as EVs replace petrol, and heat pumps replace gas (which are in early stages), the broader energy mix will transition too.

1/ Image
In low & middle income countries, energy consumption is growing strongly, so all of the lines are going up.

However, I think "energy addition" is the wrong phrase here. It's more like "fossil energy displacement".

Growth in fossil fuels would be ⬆️⬆️ without renewables.

2/ Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 4, 2023
Terrible of the @guardian to publish this ill-informed, out-dated article on EVs.

Why does it build so much of its coverage around the climate crisis, then continually publish nonsense articles that undermine real solutions to address it?

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Image
@guardian Most of the claims in the article are wrong.

You only have to look at the first, on the CO2 emissions of EVs vs. petrol/diesel cars.

Yes, emissions are higher during the production of an EV but this very quickly pays off when you start driving it.

... Image
@guardian Many have covered this in detail:

carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-…

sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/ev-fossil-ca…

iea.org/data-and-stati…

Over its life course, the emissions of EVs are lower (how much lower depends on the electricity mix). As the world decarbonises, this will get even better.

...
Read 5 tweets
Mar 29, 2023
What impact have national greenhouse gas emissions had on global warming?

A new paper by @Jones_MattW & team at @gcarbonproject quantifies each country's contribution to global mean surface temperature rise.

I've added this data to @OurWorldInData. Here are some highlights 👇 Image
@Jones_MattW @gcarbonproject @OurWorldInData First, the team calculcates contributions to temperature rise using cumulative emissions of CO2, methane & nitrous oxide since 1850.

They convert this into carbon-dioxide equivalents using the GWP* method.

Includes emissions from fossil sources, agriculture & land use

1/
@Jones_MattW @gcarbonproject @OurWorldInData Here are 5 countries with the largest contributions to global temperature rise.

🇺🇸 USA: 0.28°C
🇨🇳 China: 0.2°C
🇷🇺 Russia: 0.1°C
🇧🇷 Brazil: 0.08°C
🇮🇳 India: 0.08°C

2/ Image
Read 12 tweets
Dec 22, 2022
It's easy to be skeptical that countries are taking little action on climate change.

This isn't true.

Looking at the shift in our trajectory in just a few years tells a different story.

I looked back at the past 6 years of @climateactiontr projections 👇
@climateactiontr 2016.

Policies in place would have taken us to 3.3 to 3.8°C by 2100.

Country pledges to 2.5 to 2.7°C.

1/
@climateactiontr 2017.

National policies: 3.1 to 3.7°C

Country pledges: 2.6 to 3.2°C

2/
Read 11 tweets
Dec 20, 2022
🆕 @f_spooner and I have published a major new redesign of our work on Biodiversity on @OurWorldInData 🐘🦁

A day after the world sealed a new deal on how to limit biodiversity loss & reverse it.

Explore all our data and articles in one place: ourworldindata.org/biodiversity Image
@f_spooner @OurWorldInData This redesign includes a block of Key Insights on the topic 👇

1/ Image
@f_spooner @OurWorldInData A spot where you can find all of our research and writing 👇

2/ Image
Read 4 tweets
Dec 5, 2022
Eating locally is not an effective way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet.

This is despite a recent paper in @NatureFoodJnl claiming that 'food miles' make up 20% of food emissions.

In my latest Substack post I explain why this is wrong: hannahritchie.substack.com/p/food-miles
@NatureFoodJnl Some of the key points:

The new paper by Li et al. (2021) claimed that 'food miles' were 3.5 to 7.5 times higher than previous studies.

This is only because they redefined 'food miles' (to include things that are definitely not food miles).

1/
@NatureFoodJnl Their own results do not even support 'eating local makes a big difference'

They modelled a scenario where all countries got *all* of their food domestically.

Food emissions were reduced by just 1.7%.

They actually showed the opposite: it was very ineffective...

2/
Read 5 tweets

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