Vegetarian diet worse for environment than eating meat: study

A vegetarian diet may be worse for the environment than eating meat, a recent study says.

According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), who tracked the supply chain from production to household, the diet recommended by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was associated with a higher calorie carbon footprint than less healthy diets.

The USDA had said, while consuming fruits and vegetables was better for the environment than meat, the results of the study show both higher resource use and greenhouse gas emissions linked with these recommendations.

"Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon," said Paul Fischbeck, one of the researchers, in a news release.

"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."

In the study the researchers specifically assessed how growing, processing and transporting food, food sales and service, and household storage and use, impacted resources in the form of energy use, water use and GHG emissions.

The results of the study point out that while controlling our weight by eating fewer calories had a positive effect on the environment by cutting energy use, water use and GHG emission from the food supply chain by about 9 per cent, eating "healthier" recommended foods upped the environmental impact in all three categories - energy surged 38 per cent, water went up by 10 per cent and GHG emissions by 6 per cent.

The study published by the Environment Systems and Decisions journal, went against the grain of recent calls for humans to stop eating meant to curb climate change.

Researchers, however, make no argument against  the idea people should be eating less meat, or the fact that livestock contributed to an enormous proportion of global emissions – up to 51 per cent according to some studies.

According to Paul Fischbeck, study co-author and CMU's professor of social and decisions sciences, ''Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think.