Including a month of vegan is probably essential for any effort to reduce our personal emissions footprint. The process of eating meat though does necessitate more land, more water use, and often more food-miles than plant-based alternatives. A few years ago, there were a series of studies trying to work out how to feed 8 billion people on this planet - making enough food for everyone to eat healthy amounts of all necessary nutrients and do so in a way that protects the ecology of the planet. Perhaps surprisingly, this diet did not conclude that we all need to be vegan. But, it did specify that a large proportion of our food would be plant-based. 

There are other reasons for veganism. Some people argue that the cruelty of our meat-eating industry is an important decision maker for becoming vegan. I can appreciate this when you consider the large-scale farms with animals cramped into tiny spaces and treated poorly. Of course, there are admirable farms too that look species far more sympathetically.

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Others reason that it is healthier to be vegan. This is only true if the diet is balanced and packed full of a variety of plant-based foods (including nuts, beans and mushrooms for instance, as well as herbs, fruit and veg). I have tried veganism a few times and never got the balance quite right - always feeling a bit brittle after a month or so... We will try and think about being vegan from a nutritional perspective as well as an ecological one. 

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So, throughout June, we will have a go at being meat, egg and dairy free. Good luck if you are going to try this too!   

What is eco- and health- wise "good to eat"?

A lively debate continues about a generic diet that could balance environmental and human health (Willett et al. 2019).

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[We recommend the following podcasts to hear some great conversations on this:

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• The FarmED Podcast

• Unearthed: Journeys into the future of food – a series from 2022 looking at our impact on the planet from food production

• Foodture – a series from (2019) providing info for eating sustainably

• Food Sustainability, Elio Palumbieri – a weekly snippet (about 4 min) noting what is happening around the world today   

• Zoe: Science and Nutrition – scientists sharing knowledge on gut health, nutrition and the food industry’s impact on biodiversity and nature.]

This is a tricky puzzle to resolve (hence the lively debates). We must ensure nutritious goals can be met, while restoring much of the land that is currently used for farming. As Governments develop net zero plans (the development and implementation of policies that ensure their governed space does not produce more greenhouse gas emissions than it can absorb), some land that is currently farmed will need to be repurposed as carbon sinks (perhaps recovered into diverse forests full of native plants, fungi and wildlife). These so-called carbon sinks are envisioned to soak up carbon that other polluting industries will be allowed to continue to produce. Ultimately, we need to grow more food in less space in ecologically supportive ways and create a market so that a healthy diet is the most affordable option for all of us. There is an excellent independent review by Henry Dimbleby for the UK Government on this challenge.

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Some facts are well established

1. Growing cattle for meat is more environmentally and economically expensive than growing vegetables:

   • it is estimated that the USA could free up 42% of landscape for alternative use and reduce 334 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by simply replacing beef with beans (Rust et al. 2020)

   • 85% of the total land in the UK that produces food is used to graze livestock or produce crops to feed to animals (https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/the-report/).

There are ways to farm livestock that are better for the animals (pasture-fed, free-range, organic), and (upsettingly) ways that might minimise the land required (battery farming), but however farmed meat and fish is managed, it seems clear that ecologically, plant-based alternatives are better.

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   2. Farms are businesses. States must factor in ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into trade deals and develop policy to protect those changing for the public good. Otherwise, those farms that develop and adopt more sustainable practices and return land to nature reducing carbon emissions and restoring biodiversity, will have to compete in a market with others who may be using lower standards to produce cheap food elsewhere.

   3. Our environments are connected. River systems are networks of tributaries and waterways that feed into single, larger rivers flowing out to oceans. We call these networks Catchments. Everything that flows from these minor tributaries can accumulate into the larger river. Therefore, a build up of any entity (which might be organic nitrogen, phosphorus or carbon, or toxic sewage, plastics or other pollutants) can occur if too much is collectively leaching into the waterway. That is why we must consider planning where we place agricultural land at the systems level.

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In isolation, some practices may be inconsequential to the local ecosystem e.g. spreading manure from chicken or livestock onto agricultural fields to improve soils, even using fertiliser and pesticide within our own gardens. Yet, when multiple farms, or homes, are situated close together, particularly when these are within a single river Catchment, the accumulation of the products we use will happen and can have devastating consequences. A very public case is the death the River Wye, a waterway running through England and Wales. In the past 5 years, the disappearance of most wildlife and toxic water levels measured in the Catchment is attributed to the sudden increase in intensive chicken farming and associated excess nutrient deposition along its length, and some sewage effluence issues too (Check out the film Rivercide). None of the individual farms are breaking laws on raising chicken, but it is the sheer number of farms that all produce a rich fertiliser from chicken faeces that the land cannot absorb that causes the issue.

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   4. Diet is also very clearly linked to our well-being and health. We are increasingly learning how a healthy gut (the community of living microbes within our bodies that help us digest food, known as our microbiota) goes hand-in-hand with happiness, health and long lives. [This podcast with Prof Tim Spector is handy]

   5. Unfortunately, unhealthy foods tend to be cheap. This has evolutionary routes: humans crave fatty and salty foods having lived through eras when good meals were harder to come by. These snacks are less healthy for us now. The huge market for these snacks means that economies of scale can lead to poor-nutrition, highly processed foods becoming the cheapest options. There are linked waste issues given all the packaging involved in these types of processed snacks. We need policies that can protect the consumer from addictions to these cheap snacks, and subsidies to ensure healthier options become the most affordable options for everyone. Vegan snacks can be high in sugars,processed and plastic wrapped, which are not necessarily good for us so we will be exploring what a healthy vegan diet looks like throughout June.

   6. Poor diet is deadly. An estimated 11 million deaths in 2017 were the consequence of poor diet driven by high sodium intake and low intake of fruits and vegetables (Afshin et al. 2019). The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) investigates all sorts of risk factors to our health and diet is critical. Poor diet can contribute to cardiovascular disease, cancers and diabetes. The Institute notes in their data summary that the most risky diets (those associated with poor health) are diets that are:

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"low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, fiber, milk, calcium, omega-3 oils, and polyunsaturated fatty acids; and high in sodium, red meat, processed meat, sweetened beverages, and trans fats". 

The vegan approach fits, as long as we can figure out an alternative here and there for e.g. milk, omega-3 oils, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Vegan foods include fruits and veggies but also spices and herbs, fungi, legumes and pulses and nuts and seeds giving us lots of choice.

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Global aims

The United Nations defines a sustainable diet as having three core aspects:

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• low environmental impacts so that biodiversity and ecosystems are protected,

• healthy life for individuals presently and for future generations, and

• social acceptability (Burlingame and Dernini 2010).

In 2019, a Commission was brought together to develop global targets for a healthy diet that would be producible sustainably for 10 billion people (Willett et al. 2019). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reference diet—that was defined first as a base onto which to build an understanding of the environmental impact of producing this diet for 10 billion people—features a high volume of: “vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils, [...], a low to moderate amount of seafood and poultry, and includes no or a low quantity of red meat, processed meat, added sugar, refined grains, and starchy vegetables” (Willett et al. 2019).

Choosing a vegan diet is perhaps a good option until we can decide on whether there are ways that can farm livestock and fish sustainably. Many people do manage this but when processes are scaled up, when profit becomes the bottom line, ecological health does not stand a chance. 

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On day 3 of the challenge, I am already missing butter! Otherwise, it does not feel too much of a change just yet.