Adjust the inputs below to see how the projection shifts — illustrative estimates built from published longevity research, with an SSA actuarial baseline as the starting point.
The following have real evidence for psychological and relationship outcomes — but no published mortality or years-of-life data exist. No figure is fabricated.
Displayed in weeks because that period of time hits the sweet spot for how we live and plan.
A second, separate output. Health years and ecological footprint measure different things — one is biological risk, the other is planetary resource draw-down. They are shown side by side and are never combined into a single number.
Source: Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science. 38,700 farms, 119 countries. Figures are full-lifecycle means per kg of food product (full supply chain, including retail losses). Producer variation is large — beef ranges ~9–105 kg CO₂eq/kg across producers.
Whether a fully plant-based diet extends life longer than a well-constructed Mediterranean diet remains an open question. Overlapping confidence intervals, not a clear winner.
No randomized trial has measured life expectancy comparing plant-based and Mediterranean diets head-to-head. Both outperform a standard Western diet pattern. The gap between them is not established by current evidence.
This section is deliberately general, not personal — it doesn't calculate a day-count for your partner, your kids, or your friends. It shows what the research actually says about health and household/social ties, so you can draw your own conclusions. Some of this research is settled. Some is genuinely disputed by other scientists, and we say so plainly rather than picking a side. Bottom line, though, is that your choices impact people and the planet.
Network medicine treats disease not as a single-gene or single-organ event, but as a disruption of interconnected molecular, cellular, and physiological networks — and by extension, the environmental and social networks those systems sit inside. This is the conceptual basis for pairing "biological" and "ecological" together in this framework, rather than treating the body as separate from the environment that sustains it. Money doesn't belong inside the rings — it's a different kind of thing. It expands or restricts access to what the two biological-ecological and psycho-sociocultural health domains need, but isn't itself a health outcome.
The global food and agriculture system generates an estimated $10-12.7 trillion per year in "hidden" costs not reflected in food prices — over 70% of which is attributable to unhealthy diets driving non-communicable disease, with the remainder split between environmental and social/economic costs.
A distinct estimate from the UCS figure above (different methodology, global rather than U.S.-specific, and about system-wide externalities rather than an individual behavior change) — cited separately rather than combined, since summing two differently-scoped trillion-dollar estimates would imply a false precision.
UN Food and Agriculture Organization, "The State of Food and Agriculture 2023" (154-country analysis).
If Americans ate the USDA-recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, the resulting gain in longevity — valued using standard economic methods — would be worth over $11 trillion, alongside more than 127,000 lives saved and $17 billion in annual heart-disease healthcare costs avoided.
This is a projection using standard value-of-a-statistical-life-year economic methods, not a direct measurement — the underlying dietary-longevity relationship itself is well-established, but the dollar figure is a derived valuation, not a market transaction.
Union of Concerned Scientists, "The $11 Trillion Reward," 2013.