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from Natural Life Magazine,
September/October 2007 Q: A friend recently told me that she has stopped eating meat because it contributes to global warming. That seems a bit far-fetched to me so I’m wondering if you can set the record straight by connecting the dots between environment and diet. A: Surprisingly, what we choose to eat has one of the biggest impacts on the environment, including the climate, of any human activity. A 2006 Italian study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition evaluated the environmental impact of various dietary patterns combined with different food production systems. Researchers examining the impact of a typical week’s eating showed that plant- based diets are better for the environment than those based on meat. An organic vegan diet had the smallest environmental impact and all non-vegetarian diets required significantly greater amounts of environmental resources, such as land and water. But the most damaging food was beef, with up to 100 calories of grain required to produce four calories of beef. More recent Japanese research assessed the effects of beef production (including the effects of producing and transporting feed) on global warming, water acidification and eutrophication, and energy consumption – in other words, the total environmental load on a portion of beef. Published in Animal Science Journal in August, 2007, research by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science found that producing a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide – more than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home. They also found that a kilo of beef releases the equivalent of 340 grams of sulphur dioxide and 59 grams of phosphate, and consumes 169 megajoules of energy. The calculations, which are based on standard industrial methods of meat production in Japan, did not include the impact of managing farm infrastructure and transporting the meat, so the total environmental load is even higher when they are factored in. Since global beef consumption is rising dramatically, meeting this demand will no doubt require that animals be reared more intensively and cheaply with factory farming, creating further pollution, water and land usage problems. The environmental load is so high, in fact, that... To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's online edition. Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with over 30 years of experience. She has also authored nine books. Visit her website. |
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