According to new research published in the Lancet, Climate change could kill more than 500,000 people a year globally by 2050 by making their diets less healthy. The research is the strongest evidence yet that climate change could have damaging consequences for food production and health worldwide.

Researcher Marco Springmann from the University of Oxford said that much research has looked at food security, but little has focused on the wider health effects of agricultural production. Changes in food availability and intake also affect dietary and weight-related risk factors such as low fruit and vegetable intake, high red meat consumption, and high bodyweight. These all increase the incidence of non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, stroke and cancer and death from them.

The countries that are likely to be worst affected are low- and middle-income countries, predominantly those in the Western Pacific region (264000 deaths) and Southeast Asia (164000), with almost three-quarters of all climate-related deaths expected to occur in China (248000) and India (136000). On a per-capita basis, also Greece (124 deaths per million people) and Italy (89 deaths per million people) are likely to be significantly affected.