United Kingdom: A recent study has found that eating a vegan diet can significantly reduce the damage to the environment caused by food production.
The research, published in the journal Nature Food, suggested that vegan diets resulted in 75 percent less climate-heating emissions, water pollution, and land use than diets in which more than 100 grammes of meat a day were eaten. Vegan diets also cut the destruction of wildlife by 66 percent and water use by 54 percent.
The research analysed the real diets of 55,000 people in the UK. It also used data from 38,000 farms in 119 countries to account for differences in the impact of particular foods that are produced in different ways and places.
The researchers concluded that what was eaten was far more important in terms of environmental impacts than where and how it was produced.
Prof. Peter Scarborough at Oxford University, who led the research, remarked that “our dietary choices have a big impact on the planet. Cutting down the amount of meat and dairy in your diet can make a big difference to your dietary footprint.”
The study further showed that low-meat diets, that is, less than 50 grammes a day, had half the impact of high-meat diets on greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and land use. However, the differences between low-meat, pescetarian, and vegetarian diets were relatively small.
In addition, the research team noted that diets enabling global food production to be sustainable would mean people in rich nations “radically” reducing meat and dairy consumption.
The biggest difference seen in the study was in emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas produced by cattle and sheep, which were 93 percent lower for vegan diets compared with high-meat diets.
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