Scarborough et al., 2023
Scarborough, P., Clark, M., Cobiac, L., Papier, K., Knuppel, A., Lynch, J., ... & Springmann, M. (2023). Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts. Nature Food, 4(7), 565-574.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
- Modelled dietary scenarios often fail to reflect true dietary practice and do not account for variation in the environmental burden of food due to sourcing and production methods.
- Here we link dietary data from a sample of 55,504 vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters with food-level data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication risk and potential biodiversity loss from a review of 570 life-cycle assessments covering more than 38,000 farms in 119 countries.
- Our results include the variation in food production and sourcing that is observed in the review of life-cycle assessments.
- All environmental indicators showed a positive association with amounts of animal-based food consumed.
- Dietary impacts of vegans were:
- 25.1% (95% uncertainty interval, 15.1–37.0%) of high meat-eaters (≥100 g total meat consumed per day) for greenhouse gas emissions
- 25.1% (7.1–44.5%) for land use
- 46.4% (21.0–81.0%) for water use
- 27.0% (19.4–40.4%) for eutrophication
- 34.3% (12.0–65.3%) for biodiversity.
- At least 30% differences were found between low and high meat-eaters for most indicators.
- Despite substantial variation due to where and how food is produced, the relationship between environmental impact and animal-based food consumption is clear and should prompt the reduction of the latter.