Sustainable-Healthy Dietary Shifts for Human and Environmental Health

Christiana head shot photo by Mark Leibowitz
Christiana Wyly, BA ’15

Individualized Bachelor of Arts graduate Christiana Wyly (IBA ’15)  is a leader in educating people about the impacts of their dietary choices and promoting sustainable-healthy eating patterns to support human and environmental health.
She is the coordinator of the My Plate My Planet initiative, an informal aggregation of groups supporting sustainability in the 2015 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. My Plate My Planet is a platform created to elevate the voices of leading environmental and health groups who are working to increase awareness and advocate for the science behind the need for sustainable and healthy dietary guidelines.
At Goddard, her research question was, “How can we transform our food system to one that can truly nourish 9 billion people by 2050 while mitigating and adapting to climate change and restoring the world’s ecosystems?”
Her final product was titled “The Untapped Power of our Plates: the Restorative Capacity of a Global Food Shift.”
She says about her work, “Diets link environmental and human health. What we eat is emerging as the largest global threat to human health and environmental sustainability. Animal-sourced foods sit at the nexus of these issues and put the most pressure on our finite resources and climate. Demand for animal-sourced foods is projected to double by 2050.
“However, the evidence is clear that it will be impossible to meet increased demand without irreversibly damaging ecological systems. Opportunities exist to leverage dietary shifts to address this convergence of environmental and health crisis and to transform our food system to one that nourishes a growing population adequately, equitably and sustainably.”
Here is Christiana presenting testimony at the Dietary Guidelines for Americans public hearing on March 23, 2015:
https://youtu.be/bLFQZCse5G8
Christiana was able to build her Goddard College studies around her activism and her passion for sustainable eating.

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