Diet and climate change

I’m so excited to write this post for everyone because it’s one that has been requested over and over! All the talk about diet can be tough because everyone has a different perspective on the right diet for them whether it’s based on nutrition, taste preference, religion, availability, culture… there are so many reasons behind why we all eat the way we do. Since I know that diet can be a very sensitive subject for many, I want to preface this post with a disclosure: 

I do not want to make anyone feel bad or wrong for their dietary preferences, I aim to give you all sides of different diet types so that everyone can be more aware of the impact they have on the planet. With that said, it’s so important to sustain a healthy and balanced diet and that looks different for everybody.

The Heavy Meat Diet

Oftentimes I hear people talking about the health benefits of meat and I think it’s important that we start there. As more and more research is done looking at the health of meat for both human consumption and for the planet, it’s becoming more apparent that beef consumption is a lose-lose. Red meat has been classified as a carcinogen; salami, bacon and sausages/hotdogs are listed as a group 1 carcinogen, meaning they cause cancer. Pork, beef and lamb are listed as group 2A carcinogens, meaning they probably causes cancer (here is an article that goes further into this topic if you are interested: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2015/11/03/report-says-eating-processed-meat-is-carcinogenic-understanding-the-findings/ ). With the rate at which cancer is rising, it is not surprising that the food we eat and the health of our environment are responsible. On top of that, the emissions from cattle are responsible for 65% of the livestock sector’s emissions. Emissions primarily include methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide in which beef cattle is responsible for double the amount that dairy cows produce. The density of cattle and the amount of farming for beef and dairy around the world are having major negative impacts on the climate and is something we have so much control over. 

Source: Cancer Research UK

The No Beef No Dairy Diet

Chicken meat and eggs are responsible for 8% of the livestock emissions and have more health benefits than red meat. Fish and chicken are not only healthier alternatives to red meat, but also have less of an environmental impact. This diet may have an even smaller carbon impact than a vegetarian diet due to the lack of dairy consumption. This to me continues to point back to cattle as a major problem when it comes to climate health and making a difference in the climate crisis we currently face. Although many have welfare concerns when it comes to the production of chickens (a topic for another day), from a climate standpoint the impact is lesser than other sources of meat.

This is a bit of a complex graph, but it represents emissions that each diet type is responsible for. As you can see, the baseline diet has 2-4x more emissions! Baseline represents an American diet in which meat is consumed daily.

The Vegetarian Diet (Ovo-Lacto)

The vegetarian diet takes 17 times less land, 14 times less water and 10 times less energy than that of a meat-eater’s diet. This is primarily because we are utilizing a lot of land to grow crops to feed the livestock that are then taking up more land and resources. The amount of resources that are used in order to raise animals for our consumption is appalling, with those resources we could be feeding more hungry people and have significantly more clean water for human use. If we utilized the amount of land being used for livestock to instead grow food for human consumption we would likely have a healthier planet and a healthier human population.

The Vegan Diet 

In the last couple of years, it seems it has become more common or “trendy” to be a vegan, but what are the impacts of the diet? Vegans have the smallest carbon footprint as they are not responsible for as many emissions that are related to production and transportation of their food. Almost 50% of the land in the United States is utilized for livestock—that’s a significant amount of surface area that could be utilized to grow crops for human consumption. This would reduce emissions and restore many landscapes as sustainable farming methods could be introduced. With other up and coming farming methods like vertical farming, the vegan diet is becoming a more realistic solution for feeding large numbers of people

What Cutting Your Meat Consumption In Half Can Do 

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, the purpose of this is not for all of you to become vegan (not that I would complain if you did) but to give you all the information about environmental and human health as it is impacted by the decisions we make concerning our diets. Massive amounts of livestock farming is a major problem in fighting climate change as it not only contributes to destruction of natural landscapes, but livestock are also responsible for producing methane which has about a 23x worse effect on the climate than carbon dioxide! This is causing great harm to the environment, but everyone has the ability to create change. If you are not able or do not want to give up meat, that’s okay!! However, with this information I do hope that you consider the impact your lifestyle is having on our planet and how you can improve for the sake of the earth. Even if it’s just reducing meat consumption to eating red meat once or twice a week or committing to being a vegetarian or vegan one week or one month out of the year, these changes make a huge difference and can improve the health of our planet so much!! If we don’t make a change to our diets and become more aware of how serious the issues around climate change truly are, we will not have the quality of life we all desire.

To wrap this complex topic up, I don’t necessarily have a cut and dry answer to which diet is best, many diets have good and bad factors both for the health of the planet and for your health. What I do know is it’s really important to farm more sustainably in all systems. Emissions from animals can be reduced if sustainable farming methods are adopted.

I know this is a multifaceted topic so please feel free to ask me any questions (in the comments below or contact me directly) and don’t forget to subscribe for email updates if you want to be informed when new posts are uploaded!