Study Finds Veganism To Be The Most Sustainable Diet, Published By PLOS

[Anastasia 6,093]

Study: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0165797

Took this from Reddit, but here are the key findings of the study:

Food production is a major driver of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and land use, and dietary risk factors are contributors to non-communicable diseases. Shifts in dietary patterns can therefore potentially provide benefits for both the environment and health. We find 14 common sustainable dietary patterns across reviewed studies, with reductions as high as 70–80% of GHG emissions and land use, and 50% of water use (with medians of about 20–30% for these indicators across all studies) possible by adopting sustainable dietary patterns. Reductions in environmental footprints were generally proportional to the magnitude of animal-based food restriction. Dietary shifts also yielded modest benefits in all-cause mortality risk. Our review reveals that environmental and health benefits are possible by shifting current Western diets to a variety of more sustainable dietary patterns.

Of the 210 scenarios, 197 showed a reduction in environmental impacts when switching from baseline to alternative dietary patterns (sign test: p<0·0001), while thirteen scenarios showed an increase or no impact. The median changes in GHG emissions, land use, and water use, across all sustainable diet types, were -22%, -28%, and -18%, respectively. The largest environmental benefits across indicators were seen in those diets which most reduced the amount of animal-based foods, such as vegan (first place in terms of benefits for two environmental indicators), vegetarian (first place for one indicator), and pescatarian (second and third place for two indicators).

All studies showed positive health effects, ranging from <1% reduction in estimated mortality risk for vegetarian diets, to 19% for vegan diets, though some of these were not statistically significant.

Several considerations regarding environmentally sustainable eating are worth noting. Firstly, the production of food (i.e. the growing of crops and raising of livestock) is the primary driver of environmental impacts, as opposed to later stages such as transport and processing [92, 93]. While local and seasonal diets have advantages such as protecting local economies and crop diversity, efforts to reduce dietary-related environmental impacts should focus on reducing animal-based foods in high-consuming societies.

Our review showed that reductions above 70% of GHG emissions and land use, and 50% of water use, could be achieved by shifting typical Western diets to more environmentally sustainable dietary patterns. Medians of these impacts across all studies suggest possible reductions of between 20–30%. This review is the most recent and comprehensive to date, and the first to compare impacts across GHG emissions, land use, and water use.



No news outlets have picked this up, though it came out November 3rd.

Not sure what to tag this as, help?

[MonsterJC 174]

99% of this forum can't go vegan anyways because they swallow 

Hey gaysss !!!

[Melech 9,900]

I don't even eat much meat. Just chicken now and then. But I can't stop eating Mozzarella

 

[JoeJane 2,333]

never gets old

[Anastasia 6,093]

Just now, Simon said:

I don't even eat much meat. Just chicken now and then. But I can't stop eating Mozzarella

 

That's actually a really big help, making small changes like that do have an impact 

If cheese is your biggest issue, you could try going vegan except for cheese, or try vegetarianism for now. 

[ilocorB 548]

Veganism is the only true way to save the planet from climate change and it is so simple to make the change, way easier than what the media and people say. 

[Sunny 12,753]

 

[Melech 9,900]

Just now, Anastasia said:

That's actually a really big help, making small changes like that do have an impact 

If cheese is your biggest issue, you could try going vegan except for cheese, or try vegetarianism for now. 

My parents always cooked already really green.   Pig for obvious reason no, and we never really liked cow, so we only ate chicken or fish sometimes

Also I'm lazy too cook meat when I'm on my own

[Anastasia 6,093]

1 minute ago, JoeJane said:

never gets old

I can't understand how she said she will never wear leather to doing this 

[gagu 1,928]

I could be fine without meat. But couldn't live without milk products and eggs, see I'm italian and a pastry chef.. 

can I breed a couple of chickens to make me some eggs? I swear I won't beat them 

[Anastasia 6,093]

2 minutes ago, Sunny said:

 

I know you're joking, but you don't have to only eat healthy foods, Oreos in North American are vegan surprisingly 

[Anastasia 6,093]

1 minute ago, gagu said:

I could be fine without meat. But couldn't live without milk products and eggs, see I'm italian and a pastry chef.. 

can I breed a couple of chickens to make me some eggs? I swear I won't beat them 

Vegetarianism makes an impact, you should give it a go! 

[Sunny 12,753]

Just now, Anastasia said:

I know you're joking, but you don't have to only eat healthy foods, Oreos in North American are vegan surprisingly

Yea, I am :P

I probably don't have the determination to be complete vegan, but I'd like to try it out. I watch a lot of food blogs and when they go to vegan restaurants they say it tastes like real meat / eggs / butter

[Melech 9,900]

5 minutes ago, Awkwardbrocoli said:

Veganism is the only true way to save the planet from climate change and it is so simple to make the change, way easier than what the media and people say. 

I don't really think that Veganism is the only true way. Considering it's really important to switch to electronic cars and stop outsourcing the planet. Though it's all messy up and not easy to solve. For example humans are depending on oil, because it is used also for medicine. So the best is to stop using petroleum for cars, but more/only for medicine. I think this is were the real problem lays

[Anastasia 6,093]

Just now, Sunny said:

Yea, I am :P

I probably don't have the determination to be complete vegan, but I'd like to try it out. I watch a lot of food blogs and when they go to vegan restaurants they say it tastes like real meat / eggs / butter

Definitely, I just had nachos the other day and the cheese tastes like real dairy its amazing. 

Recipe: 

Spoiler

 

It's okay if you can't go full vegan, but making small changes like making this vegan nacho cheese over buying dairy can make a difference. For now just try to have fun with it and see it as trying out new foods and recipes, it will make it easier and more interesting. That Youtube channel has a lot of amazing recipes, you should check it out and try some of their recipes when your in the mood for experimenting. Every little effort counts!