Healthy You • Healthy Earth • Healthy You

Some Scientific Support for a sound idea

Take data from 55,504 people’s diets — plus information from 38,000 farms in 119 countries — and what do you find? Peter Scarborough, professor of population health at Oxford, found something incredible. He looked at vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters, and meat-eaters and their food consumption, and how that eating impacted greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, algae blooms in water, and potential biodiversity loss.

Individuals who ate only plant-based food were responsible for less greenhouse gas emissions than those who ate fewer than about a serving of meat a day. Specifically, vegans caused 75% less greenhouse gasses than someone eating 3.5 ounces of meat a day — that’s less than a “quarter-pounder.”

• Vegans vs. Those with Meat-Heavy Diets
  • 75 percent less greenhouse gas emissions
  • 75 percent less land use
  • 66 percent less biodiversity loss
  • 54 percent less water use

In the New York Times on July 21, 2023, Cara Buckley shared that Dr. Scarborough said that if meat eaters in the UK cut meat intake down from 3.5 ounces a day to less than 1.7 ounces a day — lowering meat intake about in half — it would be like taking 8 million cars off the road!

Type of Food Consumption	Pounds of Carbon Emissions per Day
Meat – more than 3.5 ounces	22.5
Meat – less than 1.7 ounces	11.8
Fish eaters	10.4
Vegetarians (milk, cheese, eggs)	9.0
Vegans	5.4

This informative research supports and encourages anyone’s decision to eat less meat for environmental reasons. Maybe it’s time to think “Meat Only On Monday” instead of “Meatless Monday“!

For help to consume a healthy diet from a sustainable food system, check out the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet.