From Carnegie Mellon and the “BLT’s must be carbon neutral then” department comes this story sure to strike fear into the hearts of vegetarian climate activists everywhere.
Vegetarian and ‘healthy’ diets are more harmful to the environment
Carnegie Mellon study finds eating lettuce is more than three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon
Contrary to recent headlines — and a talk by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger at the United Nations Paris Climate Change Conference — eating a vegetarian diet could contribute to climate change.
In fact, according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per calorie. Published in Environment Systems and Decisions, the study measured the changes in energy use, blue water footprint and GHG emissions associated with U.S. food consumption patterns.
“Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon,” said Paul Fischbeck, professor of social and decisions sciences and engineering and public policy. “Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.”
Fischbeck, Michelle Tom, a Ph.D. student in civil and environmental engineering, and Chris Hendrickson, the Hamerschlag University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studied the food supply chain to determine how the obesity epidemic in the U.S. is affecting the environment. Specifically, they examined how growing, processing and transporting food, food sales and service, and household storage and use take a toll on resources in the form of energy use, water use and GHG emissions.
On one hand, the results showed that getting our weight under control and eating fewer calories, has a positive effect on the environment and reduces energy use, water use and GHG emissions from the food supply chain by approximately 9 percent.
However, eating the recommended “healthier” foods — a mix of fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood — increased the environmental impact in all three categories: Energy use went up by 38 percent, water use by 10 percent and GHG emissions by 6 percent.
“There’s a complex relationship between diet and the environment,” Tom said. “What is good for us health-wise isn’t always what’s best for the environment. That’s important for public officials to know and for them to be cognizant of these tradeoffs as they develop or continue to develop dietary guidelines in the future.”
CMU’s Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research and the Colcom Foundation funded this research.
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Imagine what a diet of beans will do to greenhouse gas emissions!
Belch
All vegetarianism is about is an attempt to secure Moral High Ground by progressives who think it gives them “status” to be more “virtuous,” more “green,” more “enlightened,” more “caring” than YOU are. All of which is BS we should all stop validating. They should pick up an anthropology book and find out that the human brain differentiated from the apes’ during the glaciations, when we lived on nearly a protein-only diet. Their brains are shrinking as we speak from all that rabbit food . . . which may explain their natterings!
I am developing catalytic converters as personal hygiene items to deal with this problem.
Attached or Inserted?
To be determined – volunteers welcome.
A plug in model is required!
That comment has bean here a whole day and no one has put this with it. You all must be better brung up than me!!!!!!!!!
I’m sorry but this was my first thought on seeing the title of the post.
James Bull
http://www.vegan.com/debunking-claims-that-lettuce-is-3-times-worse-than-bacon/
This article is nothing more than shameless click-bait and a complete distortion of what the meta-analysis actually found. The researches themselves have stated that the headlines are a total mischaracterization of their findings. None of the hypothetical diets analyzed were vegan or even vegetarian—in fact, two of them accounted for eating more fish and other sea life, which have a relatively greenhouse gas emission level. Many of the plant-based foods the researchers analyzed are responsible for far less greenhouse gas emissions than than pork, including kale, broccoli, rice, potatoes, spinach and wheat (among others). And vegetarian staples like grains and soy have some of the lowest levels of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. This explains it clearly: http://www.peta.org/blog/lettuce-clarify-bacon-isnt-good-for-the-planet-or-pigs/
If you hook yourself up to your car you could save a few bucks! 🙂
What this story really illustrate is how this absurd obsession with CO2 emissions leads to absurd conclusions. The dominant metric here is energy usage and CO2 emissions ignoring more important environmental problems such as water usage and waste disposal as well as moral issues such as cruelty to animals.
Cruelty to animals…such as all those killed or displaced (which also means killed) to clear the primest arable land to grow edible weeds.
No, what this article (and the authored contribution to this site) illustrates is how puerile people can be.
Puerile? Why? Please elaborate on this…
achuara, are you serious, you want it explained why the study, and this piece, are puerile? First of all, how many vegetarians do you know who munch away on lettuce? I’ve been vegetarian for 31 years, and I eat about as much lettuce as the average meat-eater. Study after study has shown just how much land is required, and the huge infrastructure that have to go into meat farming. Years ago, there was a very simple study that looked at growing a mix of vegetables over a few fields, the energy required, and the transportation, to feed a mythical small adjacent village. Against this was the idea of using those fields to provide meat. First of all, two fields had to be used to grow vegetables to feed the animals, and the single field that was left wasn’t large enough for the animals to inhabit. Then the study explained that the animals would have to be reared (huge costs in treatments and care), vaccinised, immunised, and fed, then trasported to an abbatoir, before being brough back to the village to be consumed. The costs and energy required to feed the village meat instead of vegetables soared way above and beyond that needed for the village to be vegetarian. Of course, it doesn’t really need a study to show this, you merely have to think about it. And of course, you always get the rabid meat-eaters who will take offence at any suggestion that the world might be a better place, and use vastly less energy. I’ve given up trying to make people see this, and a few neanderthal, knuckle-dragging comments here will tell you why. In the future the world WILL be vegetarian, it simply will, but I can fully understand why some people won’t accept that – it’s human nature. I don’t feel any different, any fitter, any better, for being a vegetarian. It’s just my choice because I like animals (more than I like people), but I don’t feel I have the right to tell people what to eat, it has to come about by consensus. It does make me laugh when I see people having a dig at vegetarians. Why would you do that, why would you care?
achuara,
Gesundheit! ☺
Baz, vegetarianism is dependent on so many special circumstances that it is difficult to describe. You can be a vegetarian, but only because of the enormous base of developed plant knowledge acquired by omnivorous, risk taking, ancestors. Humans can be pure carnivores at need. They cannot be pure vegetarians anywhere without a large prior knowledge base. There would in fact be no Native Americans were it not for our capability as carnivores . You cannot live as a foraging vegetarian in the arctic and near-arctic, nor even in much of the rest of the planet outside the tropics. Even today Inuit and Athabaskan people are largely carnivorous as an environmental necessity. Modern vegetarianism is completely dependent on civilization, on agriculture, and on the availability of a spectrum of plants that can fill nutritional requirements. One of the global observations of archaeology is the decline in body size, dental health, and general population health with rise of agriculture and an increasingly vegetarian diet.
Baz:
So your rant isn’t an attempt to ‘tell’ us carnivores ‘what we should eat’?
Starting off with your ‘bait and switch’ insult calling WUWT and the commenters ‘puerile’?
Nooo, you are innocent of attempts to ‘tell people what to eat’; instead you only insist you are occupying the high moral ground while insulting us and telling what to eat.
You really should spend a few years working a farm. Animals are not grown on ‘prime’ real estate that can grow crops, unless it is during the fallow year. Animals are raised on ground untenable for crops, machinery, or harvest. Even fodder crops such as meadow grass are grown on land unsuitable for human food crops.
But, if you had actually worked on a farm, you’d learn that and more.
If you really want a high bar, try living off only the food you raise.
You also should spend some time reading history. Note especially the periods where famine struck down many. What else you should note are when isolated mostly vegetarian cultures began to eat greater amounts of meat; those periods make better health, stronger and larger physical form and advances in education.
@ur momisugly Baz – December 15, 2015 at 11:48 am
That’s shur nuff easy to do when one has unrestricted access “24-7-365-31 years” to a local supermarket or a variety of retail food stores. Urban residency is a prerequisite for being a “vegetarian”.
Just a couple of questions that have been puzzling me for some time. Firstly, is it morally superior to kill animals with a plough shear or combine harvester blade (sorry if not the correct terminology) than by stun gun? And secondly, how many animals are killed when 1 acre of land is ploughed?
Insects and rodents don’t count because they aren’t “cute”.
Sorry, but cuteness is the measure by which a lot of people judge animal lives.
Too true, the three C’s of conservation, Cute, Cuddly and Cumbersome.
Want some fun? Ask a PETA idiot where and how they would relocate any rats that were discovered in their basement.
Not as many as one would think, unless the harvester driver is truly sadistic. Particularly slow or stupid critters will get killed, but many do escape. Combines appear to kill many critters like snakes, moles and voles; but combines do not cut at ground level, but above it by a few inches. All those rocks you know.
Drivers of harvesters do see critters like pheasants, quail and rabbits and usually will slow down enough to let the animal come to it’s senses and scoot or fly. Besides, all of that blood spoils the crops that it covers.
A lot of birds become real experts at diving it to snag a moving bug and zip out with their prize.
Very few animals get killed by a plow or even by the disc harrows, these are the lethal looking ones with many blades used to cultivate the field so it is suitable for planting. Most of the critters take their cue from the plow and leave the field or dig deeper for awhile. Once again, drivers slow down enough to let slow learners to escape.
@ur momisugly benofhouston – December 15, 2015 at 10:47 am
Me thinks far more people judge the worth of an animal’s life based on the animal’s ability to “cry out” in pain and/or to visibly show fear, pain or discomfort.
And that is exactly why no one, …. including the “animal rights” fanatics, …. ever complain about the killing of fish and other fresh water or seafoods.
Samuel C Cogar: my girl loves hamburger and bacon, but will not touch seafood. She loves spiders (????) and crabs are too much like spiders for her to be comfortable eating one. She calls shrimp “the kittens of the sea.” I don’t honestly know where this all came from (I LOVE seafood), but because they are “cute &/or cuddly” is EXACTLY why she only eats land animals.
(Allegedly. I mean what dad REALLY knows the mind of his teen-aged daughter? For all I know it’s a complete act, but she’s perfectly happy & comfortable around big fuzz-ugly arachnids, so who knows…?)
cruelty to animals
==============
The US grows something like 100 million turkeys each year. Imagine if everyone in the US was a vegetarian. The number of turkeys grown each year would likely be very close to zero.
So in effect, if everyone switched to being vegetarians, that would mean 100 million turkeys each year would never be born. So the question is this. Is it more cruel to live a short life, or to never be born at all?
Given the choice, if someone told you that your choice was to die young, or to never be born at all, which choice would you see as the most cruel? Which choice would you take? Short life or no life?
So who is the more cruel? The person that eats a turkey, or the person that doesn’t?
Vegetables….what food eats.
As the chewing of celery consumes more calories than the celery provides, it is net negative calories. The CO2 per calorie metric then goes pear shaped… Ban Celery Now! Do it “for the planet and the children!!”
; sarc>
Ah, but chewing celery also spoils the appetite for real food, so there is that.
I was thinking along the same line when I first read ‘lettuce’ and then ‘celery’.
Then again, I do love celery diced for cooking; a mirepoix is essential for so many dishes. Nor can I fathom chicken soup without some celery seed among the flavors.
Lettuce? Well, ‘Latuca virosa’ does supply soporific agents, per Peter Rabbit, that is.
Commercial lettuce? Makes a good wrapper, but not much else. In spite of allusions to ‘rabbit food’, commercial lettuce gives rabbits diarrhea, and if rabbits can’t eat it for health…
Ask anyone that has been on a diet! I have wondered about this since first head about the effort to eliminate beef and milk from the diet. cattle get all of their food from vegetables and make GAS. I was recommended to try a vegetarian diet to quickly lose 15 pounds Even the protein was vegetarian. The flatulence released while I was on a the vegetarian diet was unbelievable. Beno was no help. I had to abandon the diet to remain married. And think of the amount of produce one needs to eat to provide 2000+ calories. The most expensive diet I have ever been on. The increased farming effort would be staggering.
This suggest the use of fecal transplants from vegetarian donors to ease the transition. I sense a business idea here – maybe a fecal transplant franchise?
Except that animals eat way more veggies than humans…
Michel Palmer: I like your idea of a fecal transplant franchise. May I suggest the name KAKMASTERS.COM for the website? Sort of brings back fond memories of the now defunct Taxmasters.com who used to advertise endlessly on CNN that they could strike a deal with the IRS if you owed them money.
Trebla – good idea, although I was thinking of following the trend of creative spelling … feggies, feggys …
OTOH I lost 15 lbs in six weeks on a low-carb diet (doctor’s orders) in which I was limited to 90 grams carbohydrates per day, but could all the meat, fat, and dairy I could cram in. Beef was A-OK. Sugar and starches were the enemy, obviously potato, pasta, and rice but also sweet fruits, fruit juices, and bananas had to be carefully counted. So it’s not the “vegetarian” part that did it for you, f you lived on steak for a few weeks you could lose weight like water off a duck’s back. Oh, and on the low-carb diet my cholesterol dropped from 230 to 190 in 6 weeks.
Iceberg Lettuce has almost no calories. That’s why it takes more resources per calorie. ie. Any resources used to grow and transport it are pretty much wasted.
We have been explicitly told that we must not give the grandbunny iceberg lettuce because it has so little nutrition.
Agreed. Our Professor Lapin only gets Romaine or red leaf, when he gets lettuce at all. Mostly he gets timothy hay, with a side of either cilantro, mustard greens or parsley paired with a quarter-cup of Oxbow pellets, and the occasional dried banana chip for desert.
The cilantro gives him super-fresh breath, and he likes it just fine, so there you go. Per a couple of entries lower down, he loves kale too… but holy smelling salts, Batman, if his box after dinner couldn’t wake the mostly-dead!
For the record, he now gets no more kale than he does iceberg.
OK, I’m officially sick of “studies.”
Name ONE in the last 10 years that actually changed scientific thinking. Name ONE you can remember after a month, much less 6 months or a year.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for pure research (actual objective research, that is). But this endless stream of little farts, er, studies simply isn’t headline-worthy. And most of them smell of political agenda.
Someone should do a study to determine what percentage of studies are worthless.
done. long ago. In medicine, at least
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
A must read.
Pretty sure it’s 97%
Menicholas: Re: Someone should do a study to determine what percentage of studies are worthless. I wouldn’t go there. You run into the danger of getting snared in Russel’s paradox.
“But this endless stream of little farts, er, studies simply isn’t headline-worthy. ”
Does rejection of “studies” or “farts” predicts rejection of “climate”?
Surely there is a (worthless) study to be done, based on the stupid poll.
Good thing I don’t care about GHG emissions. Firstly if you are thinking about a veggie diet make sure you get your B12 & EPA/DHA (purified fish oil). Without those you are going to have serious health problems. Secondly I’m not giving up my green leafy stuff regardless how “bad” it is for the environment. High nutritional density, low glycemic load and fantastic for your health.
Of course a lot of warmunists (I love that word, kudos to whoever came up with it) don’t want anything to do with high tech but there are farming technologies on the near horizon that are game changers for green leafy foods. A density and quality unheard of. The calculations are probably based on running the biggest tractor and shipping the food the farthest possible. Not that I care about CO2 as it helps the plants grow.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/japan-automated-factory-lettuce/
I saw a show about a similar factory in Florida. It was not automated but it did produce lots of lettuce hydroponically indoors in a floating greenhouse setup. Quite amazing really.
Always knew kale was evil. Now I have science on my side.
When I make my next horror film I think I will name the villain “Kale!”
Scotch, Russian & Lacinato. It’s a family thing like the mob 🙂
Seriously try it stir fried with olive oil, garlic & pepper sometime. Even the kids like it then.
Well, my Shanghai born ladyfriend sometime stirfries me some lettuce, and believe me,,,, it’s GOOD!
They used to cook lettuce in Victorian England. I don’t know where this idea of salads came from. The Chinese think it’s crazy, and they are right.
Surely the bodies funding this sort of crap can find something better to do with their money? Burning it would actually be more useful.
Funny that should come up. Yesterday was my day to be bad and enjoy having a couple of BLTs. I enjoy a BLT day once every month to six weeks. My better half always says she doesn’t want any and gives me hell when I bring a pack of bacon home, but when I start cooking the aroma brings her around.
I bitterly resent the terms “social” & ” decisions” being used in the same sentence as “science” & “engineering”! it’s a non-sequeteur!
You don’t eat vegetables for the calories. They’re not dense enough in plant material, except for the sugars. Eat plants for the vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Proteins and fats are where the calories are.
What about potatoes? Or corn?
Attention Anthony, or MODS
Why is that if I try to LIKE your page on Facebook, Word Press tries to change my home page ?? That is not a good thing and discourages people from LIKING your page !!
Hello Marcus.
I noticed your comments on the last few threads. But no other comments, on any of the topics. Not like you.
just curious.
michael
I also have problems with this site. Browser is quite often redireted and can’t get back to this site so have to close the tab instead.
According the Anthony he does not moderate this sight.
Galaxy S5
Android 5
Dolphin Browser..up to date
Lookout antivirus
“..professor of social and decisions sciences and engineering and public policy. “
Pretty diffuse subject matter! The new professions are getting butcher-baker-candlestick-maker-like in keeping with post normal principles. What kind of job could this guy get outside. Also, how can engineering get itself mixed up and diluted with corrupted and broken disciplines?
“Oh, I’m a socio-political science decisions engineer. Keeps me busy. My brother is only a mining and mineral processing engineer and my sister is an aeronautical engineer – pretty straightforward stuff.”
Okay, Ha ha. At least the nocturnal climate scientists are starting to come out into the light with the fear of persecution and professional death now waning. I suspect the climate scientists whose careers are less than half over will segue into a similar profession with the term ‘Wonk’ replaced by the more maleable ‘engineer’ to dress it up. Those over halfway, if they aren’t already struck down by climate blues syndrome, will, I suppose, just tough it out til their pensions.
‘Engineering’ has been pillaged before to dress up a profession. The success of engineers in space projects, the moon, planets in the 1960s and 70s even had science stealing from it. There is no such thing as a rocket scientist – ah, that would be engineering – certainly Newton’s work as a scientist was heavily drawn upon but when you make things that perform in the real world, that’s engineering, despite erudite essays on the subject I’ve seen to the contrary. Those old enough to have seen TV ads of that vintage will remember how dish soap was ‘engineered’ to be tough on dirt but gentle on your lady’s hands.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-015-9577-y
Gave up salads for Lent last year, and I’m stkickin’ with it!
Worse would be “organic” veggies: to ensure pests are eliminated, “organic” farmers flood the land to drown the little critters and weeds, drain, plant the “organic” crops, harvest, flood, drain, repeat.
Great story!
Oh, I really hope this is true. All the organic mung bean and lentil scoffers will be choking on their vegetarian airline meals as they drift away across the globe from saving the planet in Paris.
No guilt about the “pigs in blankets” at our XMas dinner this year!
This is garbage science. Ready for the compost bin.
” … for public officials to know and for them to be cognizant of these tradeoffs as they develop or continue to develop dietary guidelines in the future.”
I’m okay with “guidelines” when they are scientifically sound and remain only “guidelines” – not morphed into becoming laws or becoming the basis for tax “incentives”, etc. Look no further than school lunch programs, more than half the food is being thrown away because kids refuse to eat it. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-lunch-fruits-and-veggies-often-tossed-in-trash-study-finds/
“They found that while children placed more fruits and vegetables on their trays – as required by the USDA mandates put in place in 2012 – they consumed fewer of them. The amount of food wasted increased by 56 percent, the researchers found.”
What about eating vegetarians?
Very tasty. Especially cows and sheep.
I emailed my kids the link to a report on that study and asked them if they realized just how green their dad had been all this time.
GHW Bush laughs last!
(vs. broccoli)
This is what happens to Vegetarian restaurants when they let all that vegetable flatulence build up !!
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4662132352001/utah-restaurant-totaled-in-massive-explosion/?intcmp=hpvid1#sp=show-clips