Consumption of red and processed meat is a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and high intakes of these foods increase the risks of several leading chronic diseases. In an effort to find a reasonable solution that doesn’t require individuals to cut out red and processed meat entirely, researchers analysed the impact on the incidence of various diseases and the UK carbon footprint if people simply reduced their consumption.
Dr Louise Aston from the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Public Health said: “Reduced consumption of red and processed meat would bring multiple benefits to health and the environment. However rather than investigate the impact on health and greenhouse gases if we all gave these foods up entirely, which we felt to be an unfeasible goal, we took a more realistic approach. We estimated what would happen if the whole population adopted the diet of the fifth with the lowest red and processed meat consumption, which is an obtainable goal since a large proportion of the population are already eating these lower amounts.”
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Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Reducing red meat consumption could help cut greenhouse gas emissions
19 September 2012
If people living in the UK reduced their consumption of red and processed meat to the amount eaten by the bottom fifth of the population, greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by the equivalent of 28 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year – and more than 70,000 of the life years lost to ill health every year in the UK could be averted. This research was published in the BMJ Open.