A new study has discovered that meat eating may have detrimental impacts on the environment compared to vegan diets.
4x Higher Greenhouse Gases With Meat-Eating
According to MailOnline, experts from the University of Oxford claim that the daily consumption of just 100 grams of meat, just less than one burger, leads to four times higher greenhouse gases than a vegan diet. Such findings show how meat-free diets could significantly reduce environmental effects and impact water use, land use, biodiversity loss, and water pollution risk, Earth.com adds.
The researchers covered 55,000 people's eating habits and collected data from over 38,000 farms in more than 100 countries. Participants were categorized based on the following labels: vegetarians, vegans, pescarians, and low or high meat eaters.
The scientists then matched the data with existing databases that gauge how various types of food affect the environment. According to Professor Peter Scarborough, the study's lead author, giving attention to plant-based and high-impact food or low-impact meat could distract from the positive link between environmental degradation and animal-based food consumption, stressing the significance of their comprehensive approach.
Results reveal that diets high in meat significantly impact several environmental indicators, such as biodiversity loss and climate change. Hence, reducing dairy and meat could dramatically affect one's dietary footprint. The study can be found in the Nature Food journal.
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Animal Agriculture
Scientists have maintained long-standing contention that humanity's preference for dairy, fish, and meat, especially beef, could largely affect its carbon footprint. The animal agriculture industry impacts climate change due to livestock's carbon, nitrous oxide, and methane emissions and their corresponding supply chains.
On top of this, deforestation reduces trees that are there to take in carbon dioxide supposedly. BNN network adds that with three-fourths of ice-free terrain used by humans, exploiting these areas raises issues regarding resource sustainability.
As agricultural lands expand, biodiversity loss also threatens the ecosystems that facilitate life on Earth. The study showed that meat-eating diets, especially ones high in meat, significantly affect biodiversity loss.
Sustainability in Vegan Diets
Though the study stresses how high-meat diets detrimentally affect the environment, it also stresses how plant-based diets could benefit the globe. BNN Network adds that previous studies have shown that vegan diets produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, promote well-being and health, and require less water.
MailOnline notes that the study discovered that vegans' dietary impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions was 25% that of high meat eaters. This means that consuming 100g of meat daily leads to four times the amount of greenhouse gases produced compared to a vegan diet.
The study also found that a vegan diet was best regarding several environmental impacts, including biodiversity, land use, carbon emissions, water use, and eutrophication capacity.
Now, scientists are hoping to witness institutional policy actions that could facilitate dietary shifts away from food from animals.
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