The Research On This Topic A 2015 study conducted by researchers at the Italian University of Padova considered just that, and found conclusions that do not look good for vegans. Here’s what they had to say: “The choice between animal and vegetarian diets may have a relevant environmental impact. In such comparisons however, an often neglected issue is the nutritional value of foods. Previous estimates of nutrients’ environmental footprint had predominantly been based on either food raw weight or caloric content, not in respect to human requirements.” They go on to explain that the most limiting nutrient is protein, and that they were defining sustainability in terms of land usage and greenhouse gas emissions. Show Me The Data
The yellow lines are the amount of land needed or greenhouse gases released to produce the amount of protein, regardless of the types of amino acids that protein was composed of, we require each day. The green lines, however, are the amount of land needed or greenhouse gases released to produce our daily requirement of each individual amino acid. In other words, the green line is how much of each product we actually would have to eat to stay healthy.
Comparing This Study to Others Here’s what another study had to say: “When nutritional adequacy was evaluated by using least-cost diets produced from foods available, more nutrient deficiencies, a greater excess of energy, and a need to consume a greater amount of food solids were encountered in plants-only diets. In the simulated system with no animals, estimated agricultural GHG decreased (28%), but did not fully counterbalance the animal contribution of GHG (49% in this model). This assessment suggests that removing animals from US agriculture would reduce agricultural GHG emissions, but would also create a food supply incapable of supporting the US population’s nutritional requirements.” White, Robin R, and Mary Beth Hall. “Nutritional and Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Removing.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 13 Nov. 2017. I think all of this goes to show how much damage cherry picking can do. Plant-based public interest groups profit off of claims about a vegan diet being more sustainable. However, when you look at the entirety of the data, you see that trying to meet your nutrient requirements on a plant-based diet causes the earth incredible amounts of unnecessary harm. Both of these studies conclusions line up pretty well with the Elementa study presented in my last post. If you’ll recall, that study calculated how much food could be produced to fit ten different types of diets with the land resources available in the United States. That study found that the production model that would create the greatest amount of food was one composed of dairy and plants. A diet high in plants and dairy, moderate in other animal products, and low in meat, was second, and a vegan, or entirely plant-based diet, scored near the bottom! To sum up the conclusions of this University of Padova study, if you want your diet to meet your bodies needs and still be environmentally-friendly, consume high amounts of chicken meat, soybeans, wheat, corn, and potatoes. Incorporate moderate amounts of eggs, dairy, and pork, and steer clear of beef, sea bass, beans, peas, rice, and cauliflower. Here’s the citation for this University of Padova study: Tessari, P. et al. Essential amino acids: master regulators of nutrition and environmental footprint? Sci. Rep. 6, 26074; doi: 10.1038/srep26074 (2016).
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