CUTTING back on the amount of red meat people eat would reduce the risk of chronic disease and also slash Britain’s carbon footprint, a new study finds.
Researchers say reducing red and processed meat consumption would not only prompt a fall in chronic disease incidence of between three per cent and 12 per cent in the UK, but our carbon footprint would shrink by 28 million tonnes a year.
Food and drink account for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions attributable to UK consumers, with livestock farming accounting for around half of the proportion, owing to the large quantity of cereals and soy imported for animal feed.
Even when imported foods are taken out of the equation, government 2050 targets for an 80 per cent cut in carbon footprint will be “unattainable” without a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from livestock farming, say the researchers, citing the Committee on Climate Change.
Previously published evidence shows that the risks of coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and bowel cancer rise by 42 per cent, 19 per cent, and 18 per cent respectively, with every additional 50 grams of red and processed meat eaten daily.
The researchers used responses to the 2000-2001 British National Diet and Nutrition Survey to estimate red and processed meat intake across the UK population and published data from life cycle analyses to quantify average greenhouse gas emissions for 45 different food categories.
They then devised a feasible “counterfactual” alternative, based on a doubling of the proportion of survey respondents who said they were vegetarian – to 4.7 per cent of men and 12.3 per cent of women – and the remainder adopting the same diet as those in the bottom fifth of red meat consumption.
Those in the top fifth ate 2.5 times as much as those in the bottom fifth, the survey responses showed. Therefore, adopting the diet of those eating the least red and processed meat would mean cutting average consumption from 91g to 53g a day for men, and from 54g to 30g for women.
The calculations showed that this would significantly cut the risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes, and bowel cancer by between three per cent and 12 per cent across the population. The expected reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would amount to 0.45 tonnes per person per year, or just short of 28 million tonnes of CO2 a year.
Dr Louise Aston, of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, said: “Health benefits provide near term rewards to individuals for climate friendly changes and may thus ‘nudge’ humanity towards a sustainable future.
“Dietary recommendations should no longer be based on direct health effects alone.”
The research was published in the online journal BMJ Open.