Is Being a Vegetarian Better for the Planet?

Is a vegetarian diet really better for the environment? Many people have chosen to go vegetarian or vegan for environmental reasons, but is it really true that it is better for the planet to live a vegetarian lifestyle? This is something that scientists do not seem to agree on.

According to the Washington Post, a paper from Carnegie Mellon University found that the diets recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which include more fruits and vegetables and less meat, exacts a greater environmental toll than the typical American diet. Shifting to the diets recommended by Dietary Guidelines for American  would increase energy use by 38 percent, water use by ten percent and greenhouse gas emissions by six percent, according to the paper.

This is thought to be because a healthy diet which includes larger amounts of fruits, vegetables, dairy products and fish have relatively large environmental impacts when compared to some foods in our current diet such as foods with added sugars.

One thing scientists have agreed on is that eating beef - though not other meats - has daunting environmental impacts. This is because of the amount of grain and land used to produce a pound of beef, as well as the volume of methane the animals produce.

This is perhaps why eating kangaroos may provide a sustainable alternative. Overall, Eating Kangaroo meat is more sustainable and better for the environment than most other meat consumption. As kangaroos are native to the Australian environment they can get by on eating a variety of indigenous scrub and do not rely on the production of grain. Likewise, as they are wild animals they do not need to be farmed in the conventional way, which requires land clearing and the destruction of habitat.

There are however ethical concerns over the consumption of kangaroo meat. Firstly there would be many Australians who are uneasy about eating our national emblem. Then there are concerns by groups such as Animals Australia about harvesting methods being humane. When female kangaroos are hunted they may have joeys who are still in the pouch or dependent young roots that will be left orphaned.

So is the answer to eat only vegetables as they seems the lesser of two evils? Simply eliminating animal based products from your diet does not necessarily mean that animals aren’t going to suffer. There are just too many people on the planet. Mass planting of vegetable crops means huge amounts of land is still cleared, destroying the habitat of native animals. Not to mention the pesticides that are used which kill insects.

If the land is not been used to farm cattle, then economics dictates that it will be cleared for something else that the farmers can make money from such as canola. Unfortunately as long as capitalism is in the equation, land clearing will continue, regardless of weather we eat meat or vegetables. There needs to be some scheme that encourages farmers not to clear, where a monetary value is given to biodiversity for example.

So it seems there is no easy answer on how to eat sustainably. However there are small things that we can do to ease our footprint on the plant by doing things such as not eating beef.