All Veggies, Half the Carbon
An Environmental Article from All-Creatures.org

From

Center for Biological Diversity / Take Extinction Off Your Plate
July 2014

[Ed. Note: Imagine if people went vegan?*!]

Those who ate the average American, meat-intensive diet were responsible for nearly twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as their vegetarian counterparts every single day.

New research shows that cutting meat from your diet can cut your carbon footprint in half.

A team of British researchers studied the diets of more than 55,000 people to determine the global-warming impact of different types of eating habits.

The result? Those who ate the average American, meat-intensive diet were responsible for nearly twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as their vegetarian counterparts every single day... that's nearly twice as much of a reason to take extinction off your plate.

Read more about the study in Grist: Going vegetarian can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half.

As published July 2014 in the journal Climatic Change:

Abstract

The production of animal-based foods is associated with higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than plant-based foods. The objective of this study was to estimate the difference in dietary GHG emissions between self-selected meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Subjects were participants in the EPIC-Oxford cohort study. The diets of 2,041 vegans, 15,751 vegetarians, 8,123 fish-eaters and 29,589 meat-eaters aged 20–79 were assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire. Comparable GHG emissions parameters were developed for the underlying food codes using a dataset of GHG emissions for 94 food commodities in the UK, with a weighting for the global warming potential of each component gas. The average GHG emissions associated with a standard 2,000 kcal diet were estimated for all subjects. ANOVA was used to estimate average dietary GHG emissions by diet group adjusted for sex and age. The age-and-sex-adjusted mean (95 % confidence interval) GHG emissions in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per day (kgCO2e/day) were 7.19 (7.16, 7.22) for high meat-eaters ( > = 100 g/d), 5.63 (5.61, 5.65) for medium meat-eaters (50-99 g/d), 4.67 (4.65, 4.70) for low meat-eaters ( < 50 g/d), 3.91 (3.88, 3.94) for fish-eaters, 3.81 (3.79, 3.83) for vegetarians and 2.89 (2.83, 2.94) for vegans. In conclusion, dietary GHG emissions in self-selected meat-eaters are approximately twice as high as those in vegans. It is likely that reductions in meat consumption would lead to reductions in dietary GHG emissions. 

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