Consume more legumes
- Matilda Ziegler
- Feb 8
- 2 min read
Oftentimes, those of us concerned about environmental welfare and seeking to lessen our impact on our earth overlook a relatively simple and straightforward way to do less harm to our planet.
We should eat less meat, and when we do consume it, it’s important to focus on low-impact meats such as chicken.
According to researchers from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the University of Michigan, the highest carbon impact item in Americans’ diet is beef.
Approximately 20% of Americans eat at least one serving of beef on any given day. If Americans collectively swapped one serving of beef per day for a different meat, there would be a significant reduction in diet-related greenhouse gasses. For example, if Americans ate ground turkey instead of ground beef once a day, their diets’ greenhouse gas emissions would decline by an average of 48% and water-use impact would decline by 30%.
Overwhelming evidence, according to “How to transition to reduced-meat diets that benefit people and the planet,” an article published on the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed, shows that Western countries' overconsumption of meat is bad for both human and environmental health and moving towards a more plant-based diet is more sustainable.
In addition, raising animals to be slaughtered for meat takes up significantly more land than is required for raising plant-based protein sources. For instance, replacing beef consumption with bean consumption in the US could free up 42% of US cropland and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 334 mmt, accomplishing 75% of the 2020 carbon reduction target.
Meat, especially beef, produces more greenhouse gas per calorie than plant-based protein sources. It is okay to not become completely vegetarian or vegan, but what is not acceptable is to embrace a defeatist attitude in regard to one’s own diet.
As someone with numerous food allergies, I understand it is incredibly difficult for many to eliminate animal products, or even just meat from their diets while still meeting all of their nutritional needs. However, reducing one’s meat consumption by 10%, or swapping a high-impact meat like beef for a lower-impact meat like chicken, leads to significant reduction in the number of emissions released into the atmosphere.
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