Why It’s Bad To Go Vegan: Lettuce Three Times Worse Than Bacon

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University are claiming that eating healthy diets containing more fruit and vegetables helps to add to the global warming problem. If everyone were to adopt the dietary plan as outlined by the United States department of Agriculture, the study found that energy use would increase by 38%, water use by 10% and GHG emissions by 6%.

Author Professor Paul Fischbeck said: “Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon”.

Other vegetables such as cucumbers, eggplant and celery place a more severe strain on the environment’s limited resources in comparison with chicken or pork meat, while broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots and onions are less damaging.

The environmental costs are calculated in terms of greenhouse gas emissions produced by growing, processing, transportation, storage, water and energy use and everything needed from their beginning to getting on the shelves. “Fruit and vegetables have (generally) low calories, and the analysis, rightfully so, is based on resources per calorie of food energy”. But that doesn’t change the fact that meat production – especially inefficient meat, like beef – has detrimental impacts on the environment; even the Carnegie Mellon study says that “meats and fish/seafood have the highest average GHG emissions” of any of the food groups looked at. They looked at how it is grown, processed, transported, sold and stored and used.

The researchers’ actual intention was to look at how obesity is affecting the environment in the US, which they did by comparing three dietary scenarios in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions, use of resources and blue water footprint (the volume of surface and groundwater).

As a result, the emissions from transporting bulky lettuces are far higher per calorie than those from pork.

According to Telegraph, other vegetables that are slightly better than lettuce are cabbages which produce 1/5 of emissions per calorie compared to pork. She also acknowledges that the relationship between our diets and the effect on the environment is a complex one.

In addition to methane, meat production produces nitrous oxide, which is 300 times as potent as CO2, and the resultant manure pollutes water and the air and nearly 20 percent of edible meats wind up in landfills. “What is good for us health-wise isn’t always what’s best for the environment”, said Tom, as reported by the Independent. The researchers acknowledged this in their paper, and it has been noted many times, that meat products have the highest emissions.