Vegan diets have much lower environmental impact, new study finds
Researchers at the University of Oxford examined the eating habits of 55,000 people
A new study from the University of Oxford has found that vegan diets produce a quarter of the greenhouse gases of high-meat diets.
Researchers looked at the eating habits of 55,000 people, and found meat-free eating to have a much lower environmental impact on land use, water pollution risk, water use and biodiversity loss.
Other research has shown that plant-based diets produce fewer greenhouse gases, use less water and are healthier for the body, but may not have taken into account how and where that food is produced, the Oxford University team said.
Professor Peter Scarborough, the lead author of the study, which was published in Nature Food, asked 55,000 people in Britain to fill out a questionnaire and categorised them into vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians and high and low-meat eaters.
His team then connected the information with databases estimating the environmental impact of various food to include in the final analysis.
“Cherry-picking data on high-impact, plant-based food or low-impact meat can obscure the clear relationship between animal-based foods and the environment,” Scarborough said.
“Our results, which use data from over 38,000 farms in over 100 countries, show that high-meat diets have the biggest impact for many important environmental indicators, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Cutting down the amount of meat and dairy in your diet can make a big difference to your dietary footprint.”
Compared to high-meat diets, vegans were found to have a quarter of the environmental impact from greenhouse gases and land use, 27 per cent of the impacts for water pollution, 46 per cent for water use and 34 per cent for biodiversity loss.
Even low-meat diets had lower differences of at least 30 per cent in these categories compared to high-meat.
The Oxford University team said these results mean policymakers should take action to reduce meat production and consumption.
Agriculture is a major source of deforestation and biodiversity loss, while around three quarters of ice-free land has been adopted by humans, according to the UN.
The food system is responsible for 70 per cent of the world’s freshwater use and 78 per cent of freshwater pollution, and is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases after energy.
In 2015, the direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions of the food sector were around a third of the total emissions for that year, a previous study has found.
