A group of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University found that many common veggies use more resources to produce each calorie than most people expect.
A US study suggests that eating a diet high in fruits and veggies might be worse for the environment than eating some meat.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that lettuce has more than three times the greenhouse gas emissions per calorie compared to bacon. They looked at the energy cost, water usage, and emissions of various items.
A study published in the Environment Systems and Decisions journal argues against recent suggestions that people should stop eating meat to help fight climate change.
Researchers discovered that sticking to the US Department of Agriculture’s suggested healthier foods improved a person’s impact on the environment in all areas, even if they ate fewer calories overall.
Experts looked at how farming, processing, shipping, selling, and storing food affects the environment for various types of food.
Paul Fischbeck, a professor at CMU and co-author of the study, said, “Many everyday vegetables need more resources to produce each calorie than you might expect.”
“Eggplant, celery, and cucumbers don’t look as good as pork or chicken.”
The initial findings of the study were “surprising”, according to senior research fellow Anthony Froggatt at Chatham House, an independent think-tank which is currently running a project looking at the link between meat consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Froggatt told the Independent it is “true lettuce can be incredibly water intensive and energy intensive to produce”, but such comparative exercises vary hugely depending on how the foods are raised or grown.
“We typically focus on proteins instead of calories, and generally speaking, eating less meat and more plant-based proteins can lower emissions,” he said.
According to the authors, the study analysed the impact on the environment from changing the average US diet to three new “dietary scenarios”.
Simply reducing the number of calories consumed, without changing the proportion of meat and other food types, cut combined emissions, energy and water use by around 9 per cent.
Perhaps understandably, maintaining calorie intake but completely shifting to healthy foods increased energy use by 43 per cent, water use by 16 per cent and emissions by 11 per cent.
But surprisingly, even if people cut out meat and reduced their calories to USDA-recommended levels, their environmental impact would increase across energy use (38 per cent), water (10 per cent) and emissions (6 per cent).
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