Summer vacation is almost here, which would normally mean there’s never been a better time to fire up the BBQ and cook up some beef patties.
But a new study shows that you may want to swap them out for meatless alternatives if you want to do your part to save the planet.
Experts from the University of Oxford say that eating just 100g of meat per day, less than a hamburger, generates four times more greenhouse gases compared to a vegan diet.
The researchers now want to see swift political action by the government and organizations to trigger “dietary changes away from animal-based foods.”
Previous studies have already suggested that going off a meat diet has benefits for personal health, including a reduced risk of heart disease.
Even low-meat diets reduce environmental impact by about 30 percent on most environmental measures compared to people who eat a lot of meat.
The new study was led by experts from Oxford University’s Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) project, which is working to understand the “health, environmental, societal and economic effects of meat and dairy production.”
“Our dietary choices have a huge impact on the planet,” said lead author Peter Scarborough, professor of population health in Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and a researcher on the LEAP project.
“Our results, using data from more than 38,000 farms in more than 100 countries, show that meat-rich diets have the greatest impact for many important environmental indicators, including climate change and biodiversity loss.
“Reducing the amount of meat and dairy in your diet can make a big difference in your dietary footprint.”
Scientists have long talked about the huge carbon footprint of humanity’s love of meat, fish, and dairy products, especially beef.
Animal agriculture contributes to global warming due to methane, nitrous oxide and carbon emissions from livestock and their supply chains.
What’s more, deforestation to make space to raise cattle reduces the number of trees that absorb carbon dioxide.
The authors stress the need for “changes in diets” if we are to stay within “safe environmental limits for greenhouse gas emissions.”
Scientists are already talking about the huge carbon footprint of humanity’s love of meat, fish and dairy products, especially beef (file photo)
If these emissions increase too much, the result could be rising sea levels and searing temperatures that threaten life on Earth.
For the study, Professor Scarborough and colleagues linked dietary data on 55,504 people with data on the environmental impacts of the food they eat.
The individuals, who completed food frequency questionnaires, were carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, or pescatarians.
Meat eaters were separated into three categories depending on whether they had a high meat diet (consuming more than 100 g of meat per day on average), a medium meat diet (between 50 and 100 g), or a low meat diet (less than 50 g).
For reference, a single beef patty that you can buy as part of a multi-pack at the supermarket is usually just over 100g each.
Dietary information was linked to food-level data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, potential loss of biodiversity, and risk of ‘eutrophication’ – increases in nutrients in waters due to CO2, leading to fish kills.
The researchers found that the dietary impact of vegans on greenhouse gas emissions was 25 percent of that of heavy meat eaters.
This means that eating 100g of meat per day or more on average creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan.
Consistently, across multiple measures such as carbon dioxide (CO2e) emissions and land use, a vegan diet was found to be the most environmentally friendly option.
Similarly, the dietary impact of vegans was 25.1% for land use, 46% for water use, 27% for eutrophication, and 34% for biodiversity, compared to large carnivores.
Interestingly, the researchers observed a 30 percent difference between high-meat diets and low-meat diets for most measures of environmental damage.
This suggests that substantially reducing the amount of meat you eat can do a lot for the planet, even if you don’t cut it out completely.
However, a vegan diet was consistently found to be the best diet when it came to multiple environmental impacts: carbon emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication potential, and biodiversity.
The new study, published in the journal Natural foodwhat is now a large collection of studies that have urged people to reduce the meat they eat.
One study last found that removing all meat from our diets over the next 15 years would reduce global carbon emissions by an impressive 68 percent.
Another said meat consumption should be reduced to the equivalent of two hamburgers a week to avoid a climate crisis.
Another British report advocated serving vegan food in schools, prisons and hospitals to increase its popularity with the general public.
Professor Scarborough and colleagues point out that the UK is now legally committed to a 78 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 compared to 1990.
Therefore, it could be crucial that British citizens take responsibility for reducing the amount of meat they consume.
“If the government is to achieve its ambitious carbon reduction targets, then rapid progress must be made across all sectors, including implementing measures to encourage consumers to change diets,” the team conclude.
Never mind planting burgers! Could lab-grown red meat save the environment?
Lab-grown meat is set to become more ubiquitous this decade, morphing from a niche concept to a common fridge staple.
Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands presented the world’s first laboratory-grown hamburger from cow muscle cells, in 2013.
He is now pioneering a “kinder, cleaner” way of making beef with his company, Mosa Meat, which created the world’s first hamburger without slaughtering an animal.
The company extracts muscle cells from an animal, such as a beef cow, when the animal is under anesthesia.
The cooked Mosa Meat burger resembles conventionally prepared beef patties. The company says it tastes ‘meaty’
The cells are then placed in a dish containing nutrients and natural growth factors, and allowed to proliferate just as they would within an animal, until they have trillions of cells from a small sample.
These cells then form muscle cells, which naturally fuse to form primitive muscle fibers and edible tissue.
From a sample of a cow, the company can produce 800 million strands of muscle tissue, which is enough to make 80,000 quarter-pounders.
Mosa Meat has also created cultured fat that it adds to its tissue to form the finished product, which simply tastes “like meat,” the company says.
Professor Post believes this product will prove so popular with animal welfare campaigners and burger fans that it will eventually displace plant-based substitutes, such as soy burgers, which are becoming more common in UK supermarkets.
“Novel technologies such as those developed in cellular agriculture are part of the solution, as well as reducing food waste and changing consumer behaviour,” Professor Post told MailOnline.
‘A good example of a strong trend in consumer behavior is the rise of vegetarianism among the young generations to unprecedented numbers.
“Most likely, this trend will continue and spread to other age groups and will eventually lead to the demise of plant-based meat substitutes.”
Mosa Meat received $55 million in 2021 to increase production of cultured meat.
The funding will help expand the company’s current pilot production facility in the Dutch city of Maastricht and develop an industrial-sized production line.
