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Is Going Vegetarian Worth It?

The hidden environmental impacts behind what we eat.

It is hard to escape the problems our world faces. You don’t have to look far to see how our actions are cutting deep into the natural processes of our planet. Even when we aren’t searching for it, our teachers, peers, and the news remind us how the world is hurting and how we are part of the problem. Our generation has come of age alongside climate change. Perhaps this reflects present bias; however, as young adults, we are directly experiencing and feeling the detrimental effects of climate change as they become increasingly visible, recognized, and understood. “Global warming,” “sea level rise,” “carbon emissions,” “greenhouse effect,” “fossil fuels,” “pollution”—the list goes on—have been familiar words since grade school. Since we could talk, we have been spoon-fed solutions: turn the water off when you brush your teeth, “keep calm and don’t litter.” We recycle and turn out the lights, yet we still watch the world crumble before our eyes. The prolonged and consistent saturation of information we receive can make us apathetic, indifferent, detached, and unconcerned, even while we call ourselves environmentalists.

As a 20-something “environmentalist” in college, I have often felt limited in how I can best serve the environment; while I try to live sustainably, I feel hindered in what I can actually do to combat climate change. Amidst today’s climate crisis, most of our actions to combat climate change focus on the transition to clean energy and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. I try to limit my carbon footprint by minimizing driving and flying, but with short school breaks and my family living across the country, I find myself prioritizing my family over my carbon emissions. I turn out the lights when I can and try to minimize my energy use, but I have little control over Sewanee’s transition to clean energy. I even live in the Greenhouse, a sustainable-themed living community, but our house is poorly insulated and drafty, an energy suck. In this stage of life, I am often unable to choose the sustainable path. While these conventional pursuits are vital, they are often inapplicable to my life right now. But perhaps there is a different way we can combat climate change right under our noses (literally).

We often underrate another possible area that could minimize our impact on the climate– the way we eat. This project will explore how what we eat impacts the environment and how small changes in our diet could help combat climate change.

Effects of Agriculture on the Climate

Agriculture is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change; thus, the food we eat has huge impacts on the environment. To fully understand how our diet can impact the climate, we first need to look at how agriculture as a whole drives climate change. These three data sets compare agriculture emissions to other sectors that we more commonly associate with climate change, such as electricity and transportation; while we are all familiar with how driving our car releases CO2 into the atmosphere, this data shows how we should be just as concerned about how the sandwich we had for lunch also contributes to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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How Much Meat do we Eat in the US?

How our meat consumption compares to other countries and the country’s past.

While meat doesn’t account for the majority of our calories here in the US, we consume significantly more meat compared to other countries around the world. The United States is one of the leading meat-consuming countries per capita. People eat more meat here daily than almost anywhere else in the world. The US’s meat consumption is over two times greater than the world’s average meat consumption, and only two countries (Mongolia and Tonga, two very small countries comparatively) consume more meat than the United States. Meat consumption is generally greater in high-income countries, yet even among similar socioeconomic countries, the US consumes more meat.

With these drastic numbers, it is clear that we are eating more meat than the rest of the world and even our past selves. Within the United States, there is ample room to eat less meat and cater our diets to be less meat-centric without giving up meat completely. While going vegetarian could be a beneficial action for the environment, due to our current staggering consumption of meat, even reducing our consumption to be comparable to that of other countries or our historic rates would significantly reduce our carbon footprint and land use.

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Comparing Diets

How a vegetarian diet compares to a meat eating diet.

Many people eat meat for its protein. While protein is obviously very important, it is also important to recognize how different sources of protein impact the environment. These graphs show the carbon footprint of different meats and meat substitutes for 100 grams of protein. In these graphs, we can clearly see the environmental impacts of beef specifically.

Now imagine

100 grams of protein is about 5 hamburgers. Imagine eating 5 hamburgers over the course of a week. Likely, this would not account for all of your protein intake, but it would likely be five clear moments when you could decide to make a change and either eat a hamburger, or try something else. Let’s imagine three different scenarios.

Toggle between the tabs on the right to see how swapping the beef for chicken and going vegetarian would change the carbon footprint of your week’s protein intake.

# A tibble: 6 × 3
  entity            year ghg_emissions_per_100g_protein__poore__and__nemecek__…¹
  <fct>            <dbl>                                                   <dbl>
1 Beef (beef herd)  2010                                                  49.9  
2 Lamb & Mutton     2010                                                  19.9  
3 Other Pulses      2010                                                   0.836
4 Pig Meat          2010                                                   7.61 
5 Poultry Meat      2010                                                   5.70 
6 Tofu              2010                                                   1.98 
# ℹ abbreviated name:
#   ¹​ghg_emissions_per_100g_protein__poore__and__nemecek__2018