A new study conducted by researchers from Carnegie — Mellon University, showed that eating fruit and vegetables can cause much greater harm to the environment than a meat diet. For this indicator, popular salad turned out to be three times more harmful than loved by many of smoked pork belly.
A study published in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions, goes against the popular idea that the rejection of meat will help stop climate change. The point is that the production of food like lettuce is associated with a higher cost of resources and harmful emissions in terms of per calorie compared to some types of meat.
The implementation of the nutrition guidelines developed by the Ministry of agriculture of the USA (United States Department of Agriculture, USDA), according to the study, turned out to be more harmful to the environment due to many factors. And this despite the reduction in the number of calories consumed.
Many vegetables require a lot more resources than you think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad in comparison with pork or chicken, — said the scientists.
The researchers concluded that excluding meat from the diet and lower calorie intake to the USDA recommended level, the negative impact on the environment will increase. The result will look like this: energy consumption will increase by 38 percent, water consumption by 10 per cent and greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent.