Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts

Abstract

Modelled dietary scenarios often fail to reflect true dietary practice and do not account for variation in the environmental burden of food due to sourcing and production methods. Here we link dietary data from a sample of 55,504 vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters with food-level data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication risk and potential biodiversity loss from a review of 570 life-cycle assessments covering more than 38,000 farms in 119 countries. Our results include the variation in food production and sourcing that is observed in the review of life-cycle assessments. All environmental indicators showed a positive association with amounts of animal-based food consumed. Dietary impacts of vegans were 25.1% (95% uncertainty interval, 15.1–37.0%) of high meat-eaters (≥100 g total meat consumed per day) for greenhouse gas emissions, 25.1% (7.1–44.5%) for land use, 46.4% (21.0–81.0%) for water use, 27.0% (19.4–40.4%) for eutrophication and 34.3% (12.0–65.3%) for biodiversity. At least 30% differences were found between low and high meat-eaters for most indicators. Despite substantial variation due to where and how food is produced, the relationship between environmental impact and animal-based food consumption is clear and should prompt the reduction of the latter.

Pledging after nudging improves uptake of plant-based diets: a field experiment in a German university cafeteria

“…We use two time dummies interchangeably: Period j , where j indicates the period of the experimental trial, such that j ä [1][2][3][4], and week k , where k indicates the week of the experimental trial, such that k ä [1-5] as indicated in table 1 above. Further for period 3, we use two treatment dummies, nudge+ 1 and nudge+ 2, which would take the value 1 if a participant i was assigned to either of the nudge+ conditions.…”

“…Current meat-based diets are carbon-intensive [1] and incompatible with Paris Climate targets [2]. Recent studies indicate that meat-consumption continues to increase globally [3].…”

Trends in the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions from food and beverage purchases in Mexico: 1989–2020

“…However, important local differences in the GHGE linked to specific foods may still exist and can impact the validity of our estimates. Future studies using more comprehensive GHGE estimations, such as those recently published by Scarborough et al [ 26 ], will increase our understanding of the contribution of the food systems to total GHGE. Second, we assumed the GHGE contribution of each food was the same over time since there is no information on the dietary carbon footprint for different years.…”

Expanding the availability of soybean oil for renewable diesel with a high oil–low protein cultivar

“…Approximately 35% of the U.S. corn production was used to make ethanol in 2022 (U.S. Department of Energy, 2023), but the demand for ethanol will decrease as the use of electric vehicles increases. Reductions in animal-based foods driven by utilization of plant-based meat substitutes (Mansky, 2019;Munson, 2021), "meat" produced in culture systems (Stephens et al, 2018), "eggs" produced from pea (Pisum sativa L.) protein (Munson, 2021), eating insects (Hazarika & Kalita, 2023), and shifting to a more plant-oriented diet (Clark et al, 2020;Ivanovich et al, 2023;Scarborough et al, 2023) will also reduce the demand for corn (much of the current production is fed to animals) and soybean meal (fed to animals as a protein supplement). Development of insectbased systems to produce protein from waste materials to feed animals (Hansen et al, 2023;Kupferschmidt, 2015) has the potential to further reduce the demand for soybean meal.…”