Eat Plants, Good for You, Good for the Earth?

The American diet is making us and our environment sick

Crops, livestock, land use, food processing and food transportation produces roughly 25% of global emissions. We can’t lose sight of the fact that the enormous amount of 75% is produced by other activities. But when it comes to food, we can all contribute to reducing the impact on our environment.

Evaluation of current food consumption and production exposes some alarming data. Nearly half of our world’s land is devoted to agriculture, and nearly half of that is for livestock or producing food for livestock. Animal products production produces more than 75% of the total agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Replacing forest for agriculture has resulted in loss of over half of the planet’s forest. As we know, trees are critical to the process of sequestering carbon from the air. This is more important than ever with the dramatic increase in global emissions.

Traditional methods of raising cattle on feedlots produces a hundred times the emissions that protein substitute legumes produce. Growing plants for human consumption rather that to feed livestock for ultimate human consumption dramatically reduces the environmental impact to land, water and air. Legumes, beans and peas are a standard protein source in a plant based diet and they require very limited water, stand up to harsh dry climates, fix nitrogen in the soil and require little in the way of fertilizer. We can grow twenty servings of vegetables with less greenhouse gas than one serving of beef.

The American diet, and somewhat less so the European diet, is a leading cause of poor health. High consumption of red meats and highly processed foods is causing dramatic increases in diabetes, heart disease, chronic diseases, obesity and malnutrition, even cancers. An unhealthy diet is cutting our life short by as much as ten years. An average American is eating nearly 225 pounds of red meat and poultry each year. That needs to be cut by at least 80 percent to be considered a healthy diet. This seems daunting, but is very much in line with what have been proven to be healthy diets from around the world.

Our diets need to become much more plant based but also should dramatically reduce highly processed foods. It really is not that difficult, many of us have been eating a plant based diet for years now. Although eating vegan or vegetarian is ideal, pescatarian (fish but no meat) and flexitarian (primarily plants with limited meats) are easy compromises that are still highly effective in improving health and environment. Start easy if necessary, one or two meatless days per week and concentrate on whole foods rather than processed. An “ideal” diet of 2500 daily calories may include one serving of beef per week, two servings of fish per week, and plenty of legumes, beans and nuts for protein. A little dairy (milk or cheese) each day and an egg or two each week. Half your plate should be fruits and vegetables and a third whole grains. This is the new “Planetary Health Diet” guideline created by an international commission.

With all that said, we still do have to balance the dilemma of ensuring food security globally with environmental degradation. Modern agriculture has increased food production to counteract famine, but at what cost? And has the food nutrition diminished? Sustainable farming practices must continue to be encouraged and technology will play a part in improving the environmental impact of food production. And as individuals, adopting a plant based diet is the most important and impactful thing we can do to help save the planet.