7-day vegetarian meal plan for a family of 4

• 140 points, 10 per component. A component earns points in proportion to where the daily amount sits between the amount worth 0 points and the amount worth all 10; beyond either end it stays at 0 or 10. Foods to eat more of gain points as amounts rise, foods to limit lose them.
• Fixed amounts. Amounts are the plan’s average grams a day for one standard adult portion, from the same food groups as the alignment score. The thresholds are the published index’s and, unlike the alignment targets, are not scaled to energy needs.
• Shares of energy. Oils and added sugar are scored as a percent of the energy the plan’s recipes provide (2,003 kcal a day for the standard portion), with fats at 9 kcal per gram and sugar at 4. When energy data covers less than 90% of the ingredient weight, they are not scored and the total waits.
• Adapted to the planner’s food groups. The published index scores legumes and soy foods apart, 5 points each, full from 100 g and 50 g. The planner does not tell soy from other legumes, so they share 10 points, full from 150 g: the same result when soy is a third of legumes, as in the EAT-Lancet reference. Whole grains earn full points from 90 g for men and 75 g for women; the official view uses 90 g. Saturated oils and fats are palm and coconut oil, lard, tallow and butter, counted as pure fat. The published index adds the sugar of fruit juice to added sugar; here only ingredients filed as added sugars count.
• What it is not. A research index of how closely a diet follows the Planetary Health Diet, not a prediction of anyone’s health.

Source: Bui, L. P. et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 120, 80–91 (2024), “Planetary Health Diet Index and risk of total and cause-specific mortality in three prospective cohorts”. The same index scored diets in 171 countries for the lives-saved estimate.