Being A Vegetarian Is Actually Worse For The Environment

December 17, 2015 By Carol Harper 20 Comments

In spite of recommendations, being a vegetarian is actually worse for the environment and may contribute much more to climate change than being a meat-eater. The topic has been red hot considering the Paris Conference that took place earlier this month. However, the health of the population has been the front-and-center for a longer time.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the population is encouraged to indulge in vegetables, fruits, dairy, and seafood. They’re a significant part of anyone’s healthy diet. However, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) found that by respecting those guidelines, people are damaging the environment.

Lettuce is 3 times worse than bacon

Their study highlights the issue that what is healthy for us might not necessarily be healthy for the planet. Various crops in agriculture that grow some of the most common vegetables actually emit more greenhouse gasses than the pork or poultry industry. Those foods actually leave behind a more harmful environmental footprint per calorie, as they require much more energy, water, and increase greenhouse gas emissions.

According to one of the researchers, Paul Fishbeck, common vegetables such as eggplants, cucumbers, or celery are particularly bad when production is concerned. However, lettuce, for example, is three times worse to the environment than bacon. It may be healthier to humans, but the USDA guidelines recommended consumption of the green leaves would cause more damage.

The researchers looked over the food supply in the United States, patterns of consumption, and the environmental cost. This included matters such as obesity, transportation of food, storage, sales, and all other situations where energy and water are being used.

Daily calories from vegetables increase GHG emissions by 6%

They found that eating fewer calories and reducing weight does have a good impact on the environment. It reduced energy use, water use, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions by 9%. Which means that obesity is, in fact, harmful and it’s encouraging climate change due to the extra use of energy. However, the situation is not the same for those strictly listening to the USDA guidelines.

By following the official recommendations, specifically the healthy mix of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and seafood daily, the impact is much worse than eating your day-to-day calories from meat. According to the researchers, it would cause the energy use to go up by 38%, the water use by 10%, and the greenhouse gas emissions by 6%.

It’s a significant observation, as it’s important to eat healthy, but how you do it can also have an effect on the planet as a whole. According to co-author of the study, Michelle Tom, it’s a “complex relationship between diet and the environment”. It’s important for the public to know that not all vegetables are good for the world, just as how not all meats are bad.

Image source: medicaldaily.com

About the Author

About Carol Harper

Carol Harper began her career as a screenwriter before turning to journalism. Before earning her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Creative Writing, Carol travelled across Europe and Asia to find both herself and inspiration. She enjoys covering health & science topics.

D Green

yawn- anyone care?
- Greeley Miklashek
  
  Not about you, thanks.
  - D Green
    
    bite me dick
Greeley Miklashek

What this article and the research behind it really highlights is the carbon footprint of America’s vegetable production and distribution system. Local organic small farms will have a much smaller carbon footprint. The article is wonderfully ironic and totally misleading. Nice work.
- Misha Kov
  
  Greeley, it’s actually not true. “Local organic farm” use more resources than large scale corporate farms. Here is a short list of things how:
  
  – Farms that are primarily automated can hire less people (cutting out the need to commute to work – gas emission)
  Large farms use pesticides which eliminate much waste due to damaged crops
  – Large farms have funds to buy state of the art machinery that have lower pollution index while most organic farmers still use old outdated tractors and combiners.
  – Large farms have efficient transportation system. One large semi truck typically emits less pollution than 20 small pickup trucks (most shit is moved by trains which is even lesser emission per cubic foot of goods moved)
  – Also, shopping at ONE LARGE grocery store like Publix or Kroger eliminates unneeded trips to various markets to buy different products (trip to butcher shop, trip to farmers market, trip for household supply, etc.)
  – Organic produce/products tend to have shorter shelf life which increases waste! Waste is not good by anyone’s standard.
  – Untreated produce can potential have higher risk for carrying various bacterias like e.Coli
  
  While I personally prefer organic products (for nutritional value) I perfectly understand that I am making a life of shit load of people difficult and possibly affecting environment by my choices.
  - Greeley Miklashek
    
    So, you assume too much. When the oil runs out or the price just gets too high, all industries and services will have to return to local centers and we can finally say good-bye to all that cheap petrochemical dependent “food” being transported by all those container ships and 18 wheelers. We will have no choice. Our current idiotic large scale monoculture industrial farming will collapse and what do you think will have to replace it? Small scale, human and animal labor intensive non-petrochemical farming, probably more like 18th and early 19th century farming techniques, or many current small organic farms, will be mandatory and far, far more environmentally friendly. Mother Nature will be smiling. The health benefits of this mandatory shift should be obvious. Broaden your horizon and you too will see that the earth is, indeed, round.
    - Misha Kov
      
      I have very bad news for you,…. actually two bad news:
      1) you watch waaaay too many apocalyptic hollywood flicks. The ones where civilization collapses into itself and we return back to “stone age”.
      2) “when oil runs out” -> Mostly likely we’ll be using alternate source of energy, but when that happens there will be next to nothing of naturally produced food. Even right know science is advancing in creating artificial foods. Essentially, your food will be created in lab, probably in form of pills or shakes which you will consume to survive and not to enjoy. Hopefully then we will address the monstrous obesity problem.
      
      The farming, any type of farming, is dying in business. Even today large farming are hardly farms: it’s just a conveyor for producing mass of food.
      
      I am not saying it’s “good” i am saying that if you believe that we will go back to 18th-19th century, get off NetFlix. This isn’t Hollywood. Sorry.
      
      Either you’re very naive, a kid, or just living under a rock.
      - Greeley Miklashek
        
        Actually, you are very bad news for me. I’m a retired Professor of Psychiatry and former organic farm operator. You are an arrogant, opinionated Russian.
      - Misha Kov
        
        It’s funny how you use stereotypes and fall back on “argument of authority” because, you simply cannot make a valid logical point to back up your statements. If you feel the need to flash your academic “creds” and attack a nationality to argue you point, you’re a very weak debater. I don’t know where you got your Ph.D. but subjects like logic and reasoning must have escaped your curriculum.
        
        Sorry your fantasy world is just not going to happen. As far as farming goes, I don’t believe you operated large enough farm to understand the dynamics of such entity.
        
        And to think that at some point you used to “teach” students and brainwash them with your hatred filled ideas. People like you should never be allowed to teach. Ever.
        
        I am not Russian, btw, I am Ukrainian and while I don’t need to defend my nationality, I feel that there is a great deal of ignorance going on in your head about cultures outside of United States.
      - Greeley Miklashek
        
        I’ll leave the “hatred filled ideas” to the expert. I’m weak in that area but pretty good with sarcasm, if I do say so myself.
      - Misha Kov
        
        The only thing you’re good with is trolling internet with your liberal agenda. Don’t come back here saying “ohh i was just being sarcastic, ooopsies!” You cannot take back what you said.
sorgfelt

No references.
- Gayle63
  
  Well said, sorgfelt. Thank you for that link.
ericbrady

I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t reading the Onion.
JimP

Total garbage
sealbeams

If farm animals could talk I think they would disagree and they are all vegetarians. Marketing is like politics. You can’t believe any of it.
Robb49

What most people call organically raised produce requires just as much energy and produces just as much if not more green house gasses and nitrogen run off than vegetables raised with chemical fertilizer. Just composting plant matter and manure releases tremendous amounts of methane that isn’t recovered and requires a lot of energy to process. Small vegetables farms often use more water to produce the same of food because they use antiquated irrigation sprinklers and no plastic films to reduce evaporation. The old fashion method of producing food isn’t very efficient at all. That’s one reason why there are food shortages in various third world nations. Small farms don’t produce smaller carbon footprints per pound of produce. They just make less produce per acre of farmland. The solution to reducing the carbon footprint of farming is to use modern technology to apply just the right amount of water and fertilizer to the plant to produce the food. People need to eat balanced diets and quit being so wasteful with their food.
- Greeley Miklashek
  
  See above.
EthanCooper

If reporters had been as concerned with responsible journalism as they
were with creating click-bait headlines, they would have mentioned the fact
that because lettuce has basically no calories, you would have to produce tons
and tons of it to equal the calories in just a tiny snippet of animal flesh,
and obviously, producing many, many heads of lettuce is going to require a lot
of energy. Most plant foods are still far less taxing to the environment than
growing all those plants then feeding loads of them to animals for months to
produce a comparatively small amount of meat along with a great amount of
methane and waste.
Kim Marie

Actually, the study found that vegetarian and vegan foods ARE better than meat for the planet. You have to wonder why the meat industry goes to such lengths when it comes to deflecting the negative health consequences of their products.