Why Plant-Based Diets Are Beneficial For You and The Environment
Key Takeaways:
- Adopting a diet that contributes less to carbon emissions, such as a plant-based diet, can significantly influence climate change and is also beneficial for personal health.
- Diets that have a higher carbon footprint, such as those rich in meat, dairy, and animal-derived proteins, result in carbon emissions nearly five times higher than diets oriented towards lower emissions.
- While lower-carbon diets are considerably healthier, they also present some downsides. These diets sometimes contain unhealthy elements such as sugars and refined grains and may lack crucial nutrients like iron, calcium, and vitamin D, likely due to reduced meat and dairy consumption.
- There is a growing need for a significant shift in the everyday dietary habits of individuals over the next 30 years to ensure global food security and prevent continued environmental degradation.
- The ultimate goal of studying the environmental impact of dietary choices is to help both the general public and policy makers comprehend the concurrent feasibility of improving dietary quality and preserving the environment.
A sustainable dietary plan, enriched with vegetables and grains, is not only beneficial for your health but also plays a significant role in healing our planet, as per several recent studies.
Food creation significantly influences climate change, hence a group of researchers decided to evaluate the environmental impact of the dietary choices of over 16,000 US citizens.
Choosing Low-Carbon Footprint Diets
People who adhere to a diet that contributes less to carbon footprint usually incorporate less red meat and dairy products which are known to be major contributors to greenhouse gases and saturated fats. Instead, their diets are denser with wholesome foods including poultry, whole grains, and plant-based proteins,” states study author, Diego Rose, a respected professor of nutrition and food security at Tulane University, in New Orleans.
It was found that food choices with a higher carbon footprint resulted in carbon emissions almost five times more compared to diets that favoured lower emissions. Such diets featured larger quantities of meat, dairy, solid fats, and an escalated concentration of proteins, particularly of animal origin.
Lower-Carbon Diets: Benefits and Drawbacks
Although lower-carbon diets are considerably healthier, they do not come without drawbacks. They were found to contain certain unhealthy elements like sugars and refined grains and were observed to have lesser amounts of crucial nutrients such as iron, calcium, and vitamin D, possibly due to a decrease in the consumption of meat and dairy products.
The research findings were unveiled on Jan. 24 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Promoting Sustainable Diets and Environmental Welfare
An international consortium of experts published a report recently illustrating the need for a massive shift in the daily dietary habits of the average person in the forthcoming three decades to ensure global food security without furthering environmental degradation.
Further studies by Dr. Rose’s team earlier this year revealed that 20 percent of Americans are responsible for almost half of the country’s diet-linked greenhouse gas emissions.
The primary objective of these studies is to help the general public and policymakers comprehend the concurrent viability of improving dietary quality and preserving the environment.
“We can attain both. We can nurture healthier diets and minimize our food-related emissions. It doesn’t necessitate complete elimination of certain foods. As an example, if we can cut down on our consumption of red meat and substitute it with other sources of protein like chicken, eggs, or beans, we can lower our carbon footprint and enhance our health simultaneously,” elucidates Dr. Rose.
Learn More
Here is where you can gain more insight into maintaining a healthy diet.
