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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Neither. Carbondioxide is not an important climate driver and Methane even less so. Hence whatever food production means in terms of CO2 or CH4 production is irrelevant.
MMmmm Bacon! Just the smell of it’s enough to wake the dead!
& then there’s Ribs and Pork Belly and Ham and Roast Pork with Crackling MMmm!
Lettuce? Well yes I eat a token amount 🙂
The researchers who conducted the study said the headlines mischaracterized their findings. All it did was point out that a few vegetables and fruit have a higher water footprint than meats, and it did not examine a vegetarian/vegan diet. Check this out: http://www.peta.org/blog/lettuce-clarify-bacon-isnt-good-for-the-planet-or-pigs/
If reporters had been as concerned with responsible journalism as they were with creating click-bait headlines, they would have mentioned the fact that because lettuce has basically no calories, you would have to produce tons and tons of it to equal the calories in just a tiny snippet of animal flesh, and obviously, producing many, many heads of lettuce is going to require a lot of energy. Most plant foods are still far less taxing to the environment than growing all those plants then feeding loads of them to animals for months to produce a comparatively small amount of meat along with a great amount of methane and waste.
re ATheoK December 15, 2015 at 7:55 pm
Yes, it is not animals that utilise “prime real estate” but rather it is humans as the concrete jungle of suburbia expands completely obliterating some of the most fertile and productive farmland around that previously had the capacity to feed the entire city, and far beyond.