Pamela Martin is a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. She co-authored a 2009 study analyzing the environmental impact of an American diet based on meat versus a diet based on vegetables.
Pamela Martin: Right now the current mean American diet has 28% meat, but there’s nothing to say that if we all cut back to 10% that we would suffer nutritionally. And yet the environment would benefit quite a bit from that.
Martin’s study examined how much land a meat-based diet versus a vegetable-based diet would require to support Americans.
Pamela Martin: You need about four and a half times the amount of land to grow feed that you feed for cattle, versus using that land directly to grow food that we would directly consume.
Ultimately, Martin said, raising livestock requires more fertilizer and emits more greenhouse gases. These have environmental impacts.
Pamela Martin: We ought to be considering the health of the planet as well as the health of the people.
Martin believes a switch to a more vegetable-based American diet could have a positive impact on the environment.
Pamela Martin: I think the important consideration is to look at what’s on your plate each night, and try to make some changes.
Our thanks to:
Pamela Martin
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Photo Credit: Mr. Kris
Those of you that plan on a vegan diet had best keep the dairy in. Lysine is a limiting (means you cannot produce it inside yourself) amino acid in humans. It is very dificult to get enough when the animal is left out of an omnivore’s diet. Yes, we are omnivores. We ahve neither an enlarged ceacum nor a rumen. We are designed to eat meat as well as vegetables.
I’m hearing more and more how we need to reduce livestock to stave off global warming. In fact there is now talk about placing a carbon tax on each head of livestock, essentially forcing many farmers out of business. Wouldn’t it then be proper to reason the fewer animals on the earth the better? What about all of those smelly herbivores in Africa polluting our planet with CO2 and methane? Why should we give them a pass when our planet is overheating?
I just think that instead of Americans taking in so much food to their country they should leave it to those that DO starve like send it to Africa or something and to the freaking poor. Like seriously think about others not just yourselves ‘cuz a bunch of ppl starve in the planet when they shouldn’t, and as for americans we should just balance the amount of food we take in and stop influencing ppl to eat so much with the mcdonald’s commercials and all those other places ‘cuz it’s better to save ppl than to try to earn money by killing the world with food :(. If u want to earn money then do it by doing something good, not evil.