As it turns out, taking up a vegetarian diet has absolutely no impact on the environment. In fact, a vegetarian diet increases energy use by 38%. It also increases water use by 10% and greenhouse gas emissions by 6%.
Your Vegetarian Diet is Causing Global Warming
The data, published by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, says that the diets recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans pose a great threat to the environment. The results were very surprising to the research team, who expected the opposite. Healthy diets, because they have more fruits, vegetables, fish and dairy products, are more impactful on the environment than foods that have added sugars.
Vegetarian Diets Have Confused the Scientific Community
The study, funded by the Colcom Foundation and the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research at Carnegie Mellon University, clarifies that diets with less meat don’t have any less of a carbon footprint. There is a great amount of grain and land used to produce one pound of meat. The amount of methane that farm animals produce also needs to be taken into account. According to a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, eating beef has a dangerous effect on the environment.
There is also a wealth of information that says vegetarian diets are better for the environment. Cornell University released a report where they proved that a food system based on meat requires more energy and water resources than a lactoovovegetarian diet. This study, published in 2003, might be completely reversed by this latest study. Another study published ten years later claimed to prove that diets with large amounts of plant-based foods have the highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions. This was released a team of French researchers in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
What is the Truth About Vegetarianism vs. Omnivorism?
The research made by Carnegie Mellon University added up the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that come with a vegetarian diet. It also takes into account other factors, like environmental costs that come from production, transportation, and marketing of the food products.
The team looked into water use, energy use, and emissions for individual food products from different diets, and then added them up. The results of this categorization are very surprising. Producing lettuce creates almost as much gas emissions as beef, which is three times what it does to produce pork. Fresh fish also has an alarmingly high greenhouse gas emission level.
So while cutting out fatty pork and eating more lettuce might be good for your body, it’s actually not that great for the planet. This study also includes the cost of producing food that is eventually wasted. When taking this into account, the toll of vegetarian diets on the environment goes up even further. Compared to beef, of which 33% is wasted, 40% more fruit goes to waste on average.
Measuring the exact effect of food on the environment is pretty complicated. There’s a lot of the data that is uncertain. As such, the Carnegie Mellon study looked to report only things that can be measured concretely.
The Results of the Study
One thing that is certain is that things that are good for the human body aren’t good for the environment. Junk food and foods with added sugars have been proven to leave less fo a carbon footprint, as is the case for foods with saturated fats.
The second thing that this study makes certain is that vegetarian or not, diets have a definite toll on the environment. Everything needs the kind of production, transportation, and upkeep that needs to borrow from the environment, and that is the only way that it can be functional.
Read: We Can Make Meat Out of Plants
The Vegetarian Diet is Killing the Environment
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