Eliminating meat and dairy from your diet is the single biggest thing you can do today to reduce your impact on the Earth.
A breakthrough farm to fork study found that cutting out meat and dairy is the single biggest thing you can do to lessen your impact on Earth. Case in point, while meat and dairy provide 18 percent of all calories consumed globally, it accounts for 83 percent of the farmland and 60 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions.
The study, published in the journal Science, was part of a collaboration between the University of Oxford and LCA Research Group in Switzerland. The research team compiled nearly 40,000 farms in their database, covering 119 counties and representing 90 percent of the food eaten on Earth.
The study compiled the impacts the farms had on water use, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, climate change, air and water pollution, etc. The conclusions point strikingly toward the consumption of meat and dairy as the most environmentally taxing.
| Food Type | Kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions |
| Beef | 50 |
| Cheese | 11 |
| Poultry | 5.7 |
| Tofu | 2 |
The table above compares different food types to how much greenhouse gas emissions are produced. The kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, which the authors compare to kilograms of carbon dioxide, are per 100 grams of the food type produced. As you can see, 100 grams of beef produces 25 times more greenhouse gas emissions than tofu.
The study finds that if the entire world cut out consumption of meat and dairy, global farmland use would be reduced by over 75 percent. To put this into perspective, this would mean the equivalent of the entire United States, China, European Union, and Australia combined going from farmland back to their natural environments.
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Studies estimate that 86 percent of all land mammals are either humans or our livestock and both have made a massive and permanent impact on Earth's biomes.
After investigating the impact of meat and dairy on Earth, the authors note that a vegan diet is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth. Buying an electric car, lowering your thermostat, and taking quick showers all pale in comparison to simply eating less meat and dairy. Particularly, reducing the consumption of beef, dairy, and pork cuts out some of the largest culprits.
Need more reason to cut out or simply reduce meat and dairy? There are numerous health benefits to eating a plant based diet, making it both good for your impact on the Earth but also for your health and lifespan.
A plant-based diet
The authors note that while it's not reasonable to completely eliminate meat and dairy consumption from the global diet, every bit helps. For instance, by cutting out beef and pork, or simply reducing your meat and dairy consumption it goes a long way toward a lower impact on Earth. It's easy to start small and perhaps if everyone starts small, it'll make a big impact.
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