• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

New Research Says Vegetarian Diets Could Actually Be Worse for the Planet

Status
Not open for further replies.

Dalek

Member
New Research Says Vegetarian Diets Could Actually Be Worse for the Planet

A team from Carnegie Mellon University—not exactly a shady institution—has published a new report in Environment Systems and Decisions arguing that vegetarian diets contribute more to climate change than your standard omnivorous fare. Carnegie Mellon researchers even say that updated USDA recommendations—which emphasize cutting back on meat and consuming more fruits, vegetables, and seafood—are encouraging citizens to inadvertently use more resources and thus cause more “emissions per calorie.”

That’s the crucial concept here: calories.

Raising a pig obviously requires far more resources than raising a few heads of iceberg lettuce. But this is the larger issue: ten pounds of pork feeds a lot more people than ten pounds of lettuce. You have to eat a lot more lettuce to feel full than you do pork fat. And therein lies the issue.

The study looked at US food consumption patterns and measured their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water needs. Initially, the team hoped to examine how America’s obesity epidemic was impacting the environment, taking into consideration farming, processing, and transportation, as well as even more complex factors such as product sales, food service, and even how we store these foods in our pantries.

Paul Fischbeck, professor of social decisions sciences and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon, said in a statement, “Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon.” “Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think,” he continued. “Eggplant, celery, and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.”

“There’s a complex relationship between diet and the environment,” said researcher Michelle Tom. “What is good for us health-wise isn’t always what’s best for the environment.”
 

Sheentak

Member
If this turns out to be true, I will constantly berate Vegetarians as they eat and say how good it is for the environment to be a meat eater.

:p
 
Lettuce isn't a great example as it is basically neutral in nutritional value. In the end I think what is worse for the planet is the billions of extra humans that throw the ecosystem out of whack.
 

Viewt

Member
Before this thread goes sour, can we all agree that there are far less pushy/elitist vegans and vegetarians than there are omnivores who love to make fun of them?

As for the study itself, that's interesting. I think we're going to have to make a lot of concessions over the coming decades about what crops are actually worth farming considering ever-limited resources.
 

Dalek

Member
Before this thread goes sour, can we all agree that there are far less pushy/elitist vegans and vegetarians than there are omnivores who love to make fun of them?

As for the study itself, that's interesting. I think we're going to have to make a lot of concessions over the coming decades about what crops are actually worth farming considering ever-limited resources.

I don't think we could agree with that-no.
 
Before this thread goes sour, can we all agree that there are far less pushy/elitist vegans and vegetarians than there are omnivores who love to make fun of them?

As for the study itself, that's interesting. I think we're going to have to make a lot of concessions over the coming decades about what crops are actually worth farming considering ever-limited resources.

Are we talking per capita or just straight volume numbers?
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Lettuce isn't a great example as it is basically neutral in nutritional value. In the end I think what is worse for the planet is the billions of extra humans that throw the ecosystem out of whack.

Well, that's always been the issue. We could get away with a lot more polluting and a lot more meat if we had half the population. Lettuce certainly isn't what you should be filling your diet with if you're serious about eating healthy on a reduced or no-animal product diet, but it's probably a fair comparison given how much of it people eat and how it's thought of as this healthy food.

The OP article surprised me at first (I though it was going to be stupid bait) but it makes a lot of sense. Smaller animals have a much smaller footprint raised for slaughter than the cows we think of, and there are some obvious issues with mass-producing any food. Take almonds—people love their almond milk, and the high prices because of the drought in California... have even more people producing almonds.
 

daveo42

Banned
That...actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Most nutrient-dense vegetables aren't energy dense. I'm not vegetarian, but I'd assume a decent amount of caloric needs are met through lentils and tree nuts. Not sure on the numbers for say, soy, but tree nuts need a ton of water to thrive alone.

Lettuce is a terrible example, but cause it's nothing but roughage.
 

Lautaro

Member
Before this thread goes sour, can we all agree that there are far less pushy/elitist vegans and vegetarians than there are omnivores who love to make fun of them?

In my experience, yes I can agree with you. I don't know about the rest, I guess it depends of the type of people you know.
 

Viewt

Member
I don't think we could agree with that-no.

Well that's certainly been my experience. I have tons of vegan/vegetarian friends and coworkers, and the common thread between them is that they take a lot of care in not making waves about others having a different diet. What I see way more often is people giving them shit about not "being a real man and eating a big ol' slab of meat hur hur." And I eat meat, so I don't think I'm particularly sensitive to this.

Are we talking per capita or just straight volume numbers?

I'd say pure volume, though I'd love to see per capita numbers haha.
 
So vegetables that have hardly any calories contribute more emissions per calorie than extremely calorie dense red meat?

I guess it's not surprising, but it seems cherry picked because I don't think there are a lot of vegans sourcing most of their calories from celery. Yeah 10 lbs of celery is more damaging to produce than one strip of bacon, but people aren't eating 10 lbs of celery in a sitting.
 
Aren't eggplant/iceberg lettuce already shit-tier veg in terms of the ratio of grams/nutrients/calories?

Would be nice to see an emissions breakdown of 'better' greens and veg, but I can't find a link to the study.
 

Dalek

Member

WedgeX

Banned
I hate to advocate against omnivores, being one, but do their calculations of how much per pound per calorie cost to the environment include the feed for animals? Because that's substantial. And I didn't see it while skimming through.
 

Pinkuss

Member
The examples seem to be finely picked low nutrient veg which aren't necessarily nutrient staples.

What about animal feed being grown? Doesn't that drain resources etc?
 

V_Arnold

Member
How lucky OP that vegetarianism does not equal to eating the calorie equivalent of 20dkg beef in lettuces.

Consuming the most calorie dense foods is a staple in vegetarian diet, and one of the downfalls of it if one is careless: stuff like almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts are INSANELY dense, much more than meat. I am talking about 600kcal/100g, or going even higher, straight into 650-680kcal/100g.

Is there a problem with the average vegetarian diet? Sure, I can be convinced that. But one cant just equate being a vegetarian with eating leafy greens all day, which are indeed ridicolously low calorie - almost to the point of being basically fillers for fibre and tons of K-vitamin.

Circle of life.

Oh yes. I can still remember vividly how in the Lion King, the animals were kept in cage, poked and tortured for months before being slaughtered by a machine. Oh wait...
 

caesar

Banned
Which is not a problem at all. It's fairly carbon neutral to slaughter an animal, so if I can eat animals while saving the environment, then it's an all meat diet for me, unless I need the fiber.

I'm making the point that most vegetarians are so because of moral views.
 

JaggedSac

Member
So feeling "full" doesn't completely rely on the physical amount in your stomach? A pound of lettuce would not make you as full as a pound of pork?
 

injurai

Banned
So feeling "full" doesn't completely rely on the physical amount in your stomach? A pound of lettuce would not make you as full as a pound of pork?

A lot of it depends on chemical receptors for proteins both in meats, and for chemicals released by digestive bacteria as byproducts of breaking down the contents of your stomach.
 
Oh yes. I can still remember vividly how in the Lion King, the animals were kept in cage, poked and tortured for months before being slaughtered by a machine. Oh wait...

Animal slaughter doesn't necessarily mean torture. Places that are torturing animals should be investigated, fined, shut down, and employees complicit arrested/convicted, yes. Total agreement there. So....

And not sure the source of torture really matters whether it's by machine or not. As long as it's quick. If machines do it better, which I imagine they do, then so be it.
 

FStop7

Banned
Before this thread goes sour, can we all agree that there are far less pushy/elitist vegans and vegetarians than there are omnivores who love to make fun of them?

As for the study itself, that's interesting. I think we're going to have to make a lot of concessions over the coming decades about what crops are actually worth farming considering ever-limited resources.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=189516659&postcount=23
 
I mean, it's not like vegetarians are eating ten pounds of spinach a day to satiate themselves. There are more calorie dense plants to eat, so, although the point of this article is well taken (a vegetarian diet is not inherently less polluting), there's probably a lot of variation here by individual vegetarian diet. I'm not convinced yet that a well-informed vegetarian diet can't reduce your carbon emissions overall.
 
I see veganism as being akin to a religious food restriction. And that's fine.

I'm losing my taste for red meat (especially beef), and gaining more of a taste for veggies. Now, just throw in some of that cruelty-free free-range chicken, and I've got a clear conscience and a satisfied appetite.
 

Tuber

Member
Reading the actual article, it's (unsurprisingly) not nearly as inflammatory as the media headlines are. The gist of it in my quick reading is that people should eat fewer calories, that eliminating meat and replacing the same level of calories with the USDA suggested amount of fruits and vegetables increases GHG emissions, energy use, and water use because of a few factors.

A lot of crops are extremely energy inefficient to produce and are more luxuries than necessities. Look at the controversy around water use with almonds and pistachios in California for a contemporary example. The authors (and prior literature) suggest that shifting to the USDA recommendation is largely responsible for increased energy use. It's not that vegetarianism is inherently bad, and the authors state this, it's that switching to the suggested food mix, including very inefficient fruits and vegetables as elements of that food mix, while also keeping calories what they are now leads to the most inefficiency and therefore more energy used.

They also note that if the world did transition towards less animal protein, it's unlikely we'd remain as inefficient, and that the negatives that are seen in this meta-analysis are largely due to certain crops skewing the numbers towards waste. It's an interesting premise overall with results that seem to support previous studies on the subject, but it's not "vegetables are bad eat more meat guys," as enticing as that idea might be.

If anybody's interested in the full thing for reading, shoot me a PM.
 
This study is kind of bullshit considering they took calorie rich meat (bacon) and ice berg lettuce.

4 slices of bacon

vs

93 cups of iceberg lettuce to equal 467 calories.

Who the fuck eats 93 cups of lettuce for every 4 slices of bacon.
 

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Mjöölnir;189517418 said:
So basically,
phd051809s.gif
 
I can't access the paper directly as it has a cost associated with it, but it seems to look at a number of scenarios the best of which is to keep the current USDA food mix, but reduce caloric consumption to align with 'normal' caloric needs. Makes sense, but without seeing what the actual dietary options are, it is hard to say that they are providing options that don't include a number of foods that have a large environmental impact to nutrient and calorie ratio. It might be easy to inflate some numbers by including things like melons and roughage which use tons of water and land with little health benefit. The true economic cost of our consumption is definitely something that needs to be studied in detail though.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom