Replacement of Animal Foods with Plant Foods Benefits an Array of Environmental Factors

A recent comprehensive analysis by Oxford University researchers, published in Nature, has shown that several critical aspects of environmental impact are linked with animal-based food consumption. Compared to high-meat consumption, plant-based diets were found to lead to just 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions, 25% of the land use, 46% of the water use, 27% of the eutrophication, and 34% of the biodiversity loss.

The study linked dietary data from a sample of over 55,000 adults in the UK with reviews of 570 food life-cycle assessments, covering more than 38,000 farms in 119 countries. The environmental impact of animal-based foods is generally higher than for plant-based foods because of both direct processes related to livestock management (for example, methane production by ruminants) and indirect processes through the inefficiency of using crops for animal feed rather than directly for human consumption.

The authors concluded that “dietary shifts away from animal-based foods can make a substantial contribution to reduction of the UK environmental footprint. Uncertainty due to region of origin and methods of food production do not obscure these differences between diet groups and should not be a barrier to policy action aimed at reducing animal-based food consumption”.

References

Scarborough, P., Clark, M., Cobiac, L., Papier, K., Knuppel, A., Lynch, J., Harrington, R., Key, T., & Springmann, M. (2023). Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts. Nature food, 4(7), 565–574. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00795-w