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    Which Diet Will Help Save Our Planet

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    mahzad
    The document discusses several "climate-friendly" diets and their impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and the environment. It finds that a vegan diet would save the most emissions at nearly 8 Gt of CO2e per year, while a global switch to the Mediterranean diet would still save 3 Gt of CO2e per year. Plant-based diets also reduce water usage and free up land, helping to reduce deforestation. While mostly healthier than a standard meat-based diet, vegan and vegetarian diets require supplements or access to certain foods to avoid deficiencies. The document concludes that an "ultra-flexitarian" diet that limits but does not eliminate meat and dairy in moderation could save over 5

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    Which Diet Will Help Save Our Planet

    Uploaded by

    mahzad
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    The document discusses several "climate-friendly" diets and their impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and the environment. It finds that a vegan diet would save the most emissions at nearly 8 Gt of CO2e per year, while a global switch to the Mediterranean diet would still save 3 Gt of CO2e per year. Plant-based diets also reduce water usage and free up land, helping to reduce deforestation. While mostly healthier than a standard meat-based diet, vegan and vegetarian diets require supplements or access to certain foods to avoid deficiencies. The document concludes that an "ultra-flexitarian" diet that limits but does not eliminate meat and dairy in moderation could save over 5

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    Which diet will help save our planet

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    The document discusses several "climate-friendly" diets and their impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and the environment. It finds that a vegan diet would save the most emissions at nearly 8 Gt of CO2e per year, while a global switch to the Mediterranean diet would still save 3 Gt of CO2e per year. Plant-based diets also reduce water usage and free up land, helping to reduce deforestation. While mostly healthier than a standard meat-based diet, vegan and vegetarian diets require supplements or access to certain foods to avoid deficiencies. The document concludes that an "ultra-flexitarian" diet that limits but does not eliminate meat and dairy in moderation could save over 5

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    5 views3 pages

    Which Diet Will Help Save Our Planet

    Uploaded by

    mahzad
    The document discusses several "climate-friendly" diets and their impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and the environment. It finds that a vegan diet would save the most emissions at nearly 8 Gt of CO2e per year, while a global switch to the Mediterranean diet would still save 3 Gt of CO2e per year. Plant-based diets also reduce water usage and free up land, helping to reduce deforestation. While mostly healthier than a standard meat-based diet, vegan and vegetarian diets require supplements or access to certain foods to avoid deficiencies. The document concludes that an "ultra-flexitarian" diet that limits but does not eliminate meat and dairy in moderation could save over 5

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    Which diet will help save our planet: climatarian, flexitarian, vegetarian or vegan?

    The food we consume has a massive impact on our planet. Agriculture takes up half
    the habitable land on Earth, destroys forests and other ecosystems and produces
    a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meat and dairy specifically
    accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

    So changing what we eat can help reduce carbon emissions and promote sustainable
    farming. But there are several “climate-friendly” diets to choose from. The best
    known are the completely plant-based vegan diet, the vegetarian diet, which also
    allows eggs and dairy, and the pescetarian diet, which also allows seafood.

    There are also “flexitarian” diets, where three quarters of meat and dairy is replaced
    by plant-based food, or the Mediterranean diet which allows moderate amounts of
    poultry, pork, lamb and beef. Deciding which diet to choose is not as simple as you
    might expect.

    Let us start with a new fad: the climatarian diet. One version was created by the not-
    for-profit organisation Climates Network, which says this diet is healthy, climate
    friendly and nature friendly. According to the publicity “with a simple diet shift you
    can save a tonne of CO₂ equivalents per person per year” (“equivalents” just means
    methane and other greenhouse gases are factored in alongside carbon dioxide).

    Sounds great, but the diet still allows you to eat meat and other high emission foods
    such as pork, poultry, fish, dairy products and eggs. So this is just a newer version of
    the “climate carnivore” diet except followers are encouraged to switch as much red
    meat (beef, lamb, pork, veal and venison) as possible to other meats and fish.

    The diet does, however, encourage you to cut down on meat overall and to choose
    high-welfare and local meat where possible, while avoiding food waste and choosing
    seasonal, local foods.

    So saving a tonne of carbon dioxide is great but switching to vegetarianism or


    veganism can save even more. A western standard meat-based diet produces
    about 7.2 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per day, while a vegetarian diet produces 3.8
    kg and a vegan diet 2.9 kg. If the whole world went vegan it would save nearly 8
    billion tonnes CO₂e while even a switch to the Mediterranean diet would still save 3
    billion tonnes. That is a saving of between 60% and 20% of all food emissions as
    which are currently at 13.7 billion tonnes of CO₂e a year.

    How much CO2e (in billions of tonnes, or Gt) would be saved if the whole world
    switched to each of these diets. Terms as defined by CarbonBrief. Data:
    IPCC, Author provided
    Water and land use

    To save our planet, we must also consider both water and land usage. Beef, for
    instance, needs about 15,000 litres of water per kilo.

    Some vegetarian or vegan foods like avocados and almonds also have a huge water
    footprint, but overall a plant-based diet has about half the water consumption of a
    standard meat-based diet.

    Brazil together with the US produces most of the world’s soy. It’s also a world leader
    in deforestation. Alf Ribeiro / shutterstock
    A global move away from meat would also free up a huge amount of land, since
    billions of animals would no longer have to be fed. Soya, for instance, is one of the
    world’s most common crops yet almost 80% of the world’s soybeans are fed to
    livestock.

    The reduced need for agricultural land would help stop deforestation and help
    protect biodiversity. The land could also be used to reforest and rewild large areas
    which would become a natural store of carbon dioxide.

    (Mostly) healthier

    A plant based diet is also generally healthier. Meat, especially highly processed meat,
    has been linked to a string of major health issues including high blood pressure,
    heart disease and cancer.

    However, meat, dairy and fish are the main sources of some essential vitamins and
    minerals such as calcium, zinc, iodine and vitamin B12. A strict vegan diet can put
    people at risk of deficiencies unless they can have access to particular foods or take
    supplements. Yet both specialist food and supplements are too expensive for many
    people around the world and it would be hard to scale up supplements production
    to provide for billions of extra people.

    So a climatarian or flexitarian approach means there are fewer health risks and also
    allows people to still exercise choice. One study suggests a move to a global plant-
    based diet could reduce global mortality by up to 10% by 2050.

    Nine animals per person per year

    One of the issues that seems to be lacking in many food discussions is the ethical
    dimension. Every year we slaughter 69 billion chickens, 1.5 billion pigs, 0.65 billion
    turkeys, 0.57 billion sheep, 0.45 billion goats, and 0.3 billion cattle. That is over nine
    animals killed for every person on the planet per year – all for nutrition and protein
    which we know can come from a plant-based diet.
    Poultry production has almost doubled this century, as chicken has raced ahead of
    pork and beef. Our World In Data / data: FAO, CC BY-SA
    So what is the ideal global diet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce habitat
    destruction and help you live longer? Well I suggest being an “ultra-flexitarian” – a
    diet of mostly plant-based foods but one that allows meat and dairy products in
    extreme moderation, but red and processed meat are completely banned. This
    would save at least 5.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year (40% of all food
    emissions), decrease global mortality by 10% and prevent the slaughter of billions of
    innocent animals.

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