Vegetarian and 'healthy' diets are more harmful to the environment

[sue4e3]

Contrary to recent headlines—and a talk by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger at the United Nations Paris Climate Change Conference—eating a vegetarian diet could contribute to climate change.

In fact, according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per calorie. Published in Environment Systems and Decisions, the study measured the changes in energy use, blue water footprint and GHG emissions associated with U.S. food consumption patterns.
"Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon," said Paul Fischbeck, professor of social and decisions sciences and engineering and public policy. "Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken."
Fischbeck, Michelle Tom, a Ph.D. student in civil and environmental engineering, and Chris Hendrickson, the Hamerschlag University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studied the food supply chain to determine how the obesity epidemic in the U.S. is affecting the environment. Specifically, they examined how growing, processing and transporting food, food sales and service, and household storage and use take a toll on resources in the form of energy use, water use and GHG emissions.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-vegetarian-healthy-diets-environment.html#jCp

[LiberalArkie]

1. More than likely true. It used to be that a home garden hardly ever required water

as rain would happen frequently, but not much any more. When it rains, it rains too much.

[VanillaRhapsody]

4. that's what rainbarrels are for...

[GreatGazoo]

2. um..and what do the pigs eat? Bacon ?

Their conclusion is the scientific equivallent of a ponzi scheme.

Empty posturing masquerading as science.

[sue4e3]

5. I don't think the pig has his veggies shipped in

most the time the pig is where the greens( among other things) are grown. For the record I don't necessarily believe that any one diet is more or less carbon intensive then another. I think to be an environmentally friendly diet it has alot to do with what you eat for where you live and then compared to general statistics like cattle biomass and delivery emissions.

[Duppers]

7. My first thought too.

[stuntcat]

8. the billions of slaughtered animals have lived off dust, sunlight and bird droppings

Almost no water, land or fuel is spent in the production of meat.

And the billions of animal almost never poop - http://www.upworthy.com/a-drone-flew-over-a-pig-farm-to-discover-its-not-really-a-farm-its-something-much-more-disturbing

as the Good Environmentalists of Democratic Underground are aware, I see!

[still_one]

3. Yup all that pollution in China is due to their vegetarian diet

[handmade34]

6. so many studies...

this from the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago...

One may reasonably argue that the ?0.8 ton CO2-eq per person per year due to non-CO2 GHGs does not accurately represent the difference between animal- and plant-based diets, which is our object of inquiry; if there were no animal-based food production at all, plant-based food production would have to increase. However, such a hypothetical transition will produce zero methane and nitrous oxide emissions in the categories considered above, animal waste management, and enteric fermentation by ruminants. Ignored categories, principally soil management, will indeed have to increase, but over an area far smaller than that vacated by eliminating feed production for animals. For example, Reijnders and Soret (2003) report that, per unit protein produced, meat production requires 6 to 17 times as much land as soy. Therefore, the net reduction in methane and nitrous oxide emissions will have to be larger than our estimate presented here.

Approximately 74% of the total nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture, ?173 × 106 ton CO2-eq, are due to nitrogen fertilization of cropland, which supports production of both animal- and plant-based foods. The exact partitioning of nitrogen fertilization into animal feed and human food is a complex bookkeeping exercise beyond the scope of this paper. Consequently, we ignore this large contribution below. Nevertheless, simple analysis of the Food Balance Sheets (FAOSTAT 2005) and Agriculture Production Database (FAOSTAT 2005) data shows that the portion of those 173 × 106 ton CO2-eq attributable to animal production is at least equal to, and probably larger than that attributable to plants, thereby rendering our estimate of the GHG burden exerted by animal-based food production a lower bound.

so many facets to look at... my research and critical thinking skills inform me that the study from Carnegie Mellon should be more comprehensive...

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. I'd like to see the details of this, but you have to pay

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-015-9577-y

They single out lettuce, eggplant, celery and cucumbers as high GHG emissions per calorie - but a good diet doesn't depend on foods like that for calories (after all, lettuce, celery and cucumbers were classic 'calorie-controlled diet' foods). The comparison was between current average diet and USDA recommended diet, which they say is higher in fruits, vegetables, dairy, and fish/seafood. But that may well mean, from a calorie point of view, it's using a lot less grain and potatoes, which are 'GHG-efficient' - and, of course vegetarian. So it may not be the switch to vegetarian, so much as the switch to healthy, that is what makes the difference. In fact, unless the USDA recommends a 'vegetarian' (actually including seafood) diet, it's not about going vegetarian at all.

[Binkie The Clown]

10. You can have my kale when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

[stuntcat]

11. one reply - Debunking Claims that Lettuce is 3 Times Worse Than Bacon -

Last edited Mon Dec 28, 2015, 09:22 PM - Edit history (4)

http://www.vegan.com/debunking-claims-that-lettuce-is-3-times-worse-than-bacon/

You rarely need to look far to find incompetence, and many food reporters seem to get a double dose. Maybe the biggest irritation when it comes to knowing something about food politics is constantly witnessing members of the press getting duped into repackaging and publicizing misleading arguments. This happens all the time with issues large and small. But today’s incident is a humdinger.

News outlets everywhere are reporting on a new study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, that creates the impression that vegetables are even worse for the environment than meat. The Independent’s headline is representative of the media coverage for this story:

Lettuce is ‘three times worse than bacon’ for emissions and vegetarian diets could be bad for environment

What’s going on here? How could this possibly be? Basically, the researchers decided to measure the environmental impact of meat vs. veggies in the most misleading way imaginable: by comparing the highest-calorie meats to the lowest-calorie vegetables.

Let’s accept this study’s findings that lettuce in fact generates three times the greenhouse gas emissions per calorie as bacon to see where that gets us. Suppose you were to eat four slices of bacon. That’ll give you 468 calories worth of bacon before it gets pan fried. How much shredded green leaf lettuce would you need to eat to reach 468 calories? Oh, a mere 93 cups.

Since 93 cups is an insane amount of food, and hard to envision, let’s simplify it. That amount of shredded lettuce will fill a standard full-sized grocery bag almost to the brim, and weigh 7.3 pounds.* I hope you’re hungry! The reality here is clear: if you’re trying to meet your caloric needs by eating lettuce, you, sir or madam, are a lunatic.

That lettuce is full of vitamin A and fiber. And unlike bacon it’s fat-free, and has no association whatsoever with colorectal cancer.

I don’t see anything in the study’s notes that acknowledges meat industry funding, but it’s hard to imagine that using the calories of lettuce vs. meat is a good-faith and honestly-intentioned way to analyze this issue. You don’t eat vegetables—especially super low-calorie items like lettuce, cucumbers, and eggplant (which one of the coauthors calls out by name)—for the calories. You eat them for the taste, the fiber, the nutrients, and the fact that higher vegetable consumption has a strong association with better health. And you certainly don’t go eating 93 cups of lettuce in a sitting.

For your protein and calorie needs, you can turn to healthful vegan foods like grains, nuts, and beans—all of which blow bacon out of the water when it comes to minimizing units of greenhouse gas per calorie.

Even semi-informed people already know all this. (He's wrong there, at least!) It’s too bad reporters on the food beat are so easily suckered by a study seemingly designed to produce misleading headlines. What hope do we have when even an august source like Scientific American leads its coverage of this story with, “Bacon lovers of the world, rejoice!”

It’s frustrating that I needed to spend my morning writing this in an effort to do a little damage control. I’ve written about food for twenty years, and because of my background I was able to see through this study in about five seconds. But the public doesn’t have this sort of experience, so they’re dependent on getting their information from scientists who are doing meaningful research and presenting it honestly and in a way that won’t be sensationalized by inexperienced reporters.

That shouldn’t be asking for too much, especially considering the billions of animal lives that are at stake and the climate emergency we are currently facing.

----
It's by a sickly non violent vegan though, not a angel of environmental goodness, as you have so many of here at DU.


& the study was funded by two groups, Carnegie Mellon, and the colcom foundation, which it turns out is run by Cordelia Scaife May - a direct heiress of the Mellon fortune. Some of the groups that her foundations have donated to include anti immigration groups and hate groups that insist certain races are a "retrograde species of humanity"
Not they they shouldn't be trusted with the science of protecting the earth or whatever.. I'm sure that's what they care about.


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/16/3732852/lettuce-bacon-meat-vegetables-climate/?utm_content=bufferfada7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Everyone is completely misinterpreting a new study about American diets - http://finance.yahoo.com/news/everyone-completely-misinterpreting-study-american-173203621.html

posted here where no one will find it because no one here minds it as much as they mind their taste buds, their "mouth feels"
But I know not to bother with you selfish fucking meathead "environmentalists"

[Nihil]

12. +1 (n/t)

[sue4e3]

13. This wasn't a reporter it's a web site that gives you an intro and a link to studies that you would

other wise have to pay for. It's been my experience that the intro doesn't wander to far from the actual studies they are linking.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Phys.org isn't as bad as the media reports, but it still looks confused

The actual study was not about a vegetarian diet at all. It was about a healthier one, with more fruit, vegetables, dairy and fish (ie not vegetarian), but it doesn't say what gets cut back in that diet. And the quote comparing bacon to lettuce etc. by calories that the media have pounced on does show that person is either a fool, or has a dubious agenda to push bacon, because it is an idiotic comparison to make.

If the full study is like the phys.org article, then I think it needs pulling apart.

[sue4e3]

15. I didn't buy this particular article

but I have others in the past. For the most part the studies are relatively the same . The actual studies obviously are not in laymen terms. The only thing That I've noticed is that parts of the headlines to the intros at phys.org ( I'm looking for the right word misleading isn't it) can seem mismatched. I was completely unaware that there was any bad media on phys.org.

I think that the other side jumped on the bacon versus lettuce thing as well (making every thing that follows worthless). I didn't even care about that. I simply was interested in the actual comparison of one type of diet versus another as far as a carbon foot print. I also believe that you can't derive the whole of that topic from this study , It's far too vast. I have never believed that a one size diet fits all where the health of our planet is concerned. I do understand though that when your dealing with the masses to make any headway in any topic pertaining to climate it has to be and easy one liner that relatively works the best and any one who picks at it probably drives those who fight for it insane.That wasn't my intention I just thought it interesting