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Help save the planet by going vegan, study says
In the United States alone, more people adopting a plant-based diet could cut food emissions by nearly 70 percent.
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Going vegan – eating a diet based on plant and plant products – might have the greatest possible impact on the environment through reduced emissions. (Shutterstock/Saschanti17)
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utting down worldwide consumption of animal products and switching to a plant-based diet would contribute to reduced emissions from the commercial meat industry.
Researchers at the Department of Zoology and the School of Geography and Environment at Oxford University have found that going vegan could have the greatest possible impact on the environment, even beyond consuming sustainably sourced meats. In the United States alone, more people adopting a plant-based diet could cut food emissions by nearly 70 percent.
"At present, it’s better to change what you consume, rather than trying to purchase sustainable animal products. So, plant-based diets are the best way to reduce foods impacts," said Joseph Poore, co-author of the study published in Science, as quoted in Newsweek (http://www.newsweek.com/want-save-planet-go-vegan-study-says-952789).
Still, one does not have to go entirely vegan to help the environment. Poore and his team found that by cutting down worldwide consumption of animal products in half would cause a 73 percent reduction in emissions.
The team also discovered that it mattered greatly where your meat came from.
For example, high-impact beef produced 12 times more CO2 equivalents and used 50 times more land per 100 grams of protein than low-impact beef. But in comparison to pea growers, low-impact beef farmers used 36 times more land and created six times more emissions.
Even procedures generally believed to be environmentally friendly, such as the aquaculture practices of feeding fish in ponds and using nets with crops, created more methane and greenhouse gases than cows per kilogram of live weight.
Read also: Google's emoji update includes vegan salad
Poore and his team looked at 570 previous studies, which tracked the journeys of 40 different foods and included data from over 38,000 farms in 123 countries. From there, factors such as land and water use and greenhouse gas emissions were analyzed.
Dr. Peter Alexander, a Global Food Security lecturer at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study, pointed out: “We should not interpret these results as the need to become vegan, but rather to moderate our consumption and seek a more equitable distribution of food that creates healthier diets for all.”
He, however, praised the study as "extremely comprehensive" and "highly impressive".
"Two things that look the same in the shops can have very different impacts on the planet,” said Poore. “Food production creates immense environmental burdens, but these are not a necessary consequence of our needs. They can be significantly reduced by changing how we produce and what we consume.”
He added that as an individual, we can make that impact today, not 20, 50 or 100 years into the future when it might be too late. (sq/mut)
