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If you’ve ever found yourself arguing about whether eating meat is healthy for you and the planet and, if so, which meat to eat, you now have some answers. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), which brought us the “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the 12 most pesticide-ridden fruits and vegetables, released a report yesterday showcasing the carbon footprint of 20 conventionally grown popular protein sources, from lentils to lamb.
To come up with the carbon impact, the EWG looked at the food’s full “lifecycle”—including the water and fertilizer to grow feed crops, transportation of the food and even the amount of food that’s wasted.
The biggest take-away: eat less meat and avoid wasting it (20% of edible meat ends up being tossed). Why should you care? The implications of this report are twofold—environmental and personal health. On the environmental side, the United Nations recently determined that livestock is one of the top contributors to the world’s most serious environmental problems. Going meatless can reduce water pollution, waste and greenhouse gases, and save energy, land and water. As for personal health, science shows that eliminating or cutting back on meat may improve blood pressure, decrease your risk of heart disease, lower cholesterol and help better manage your weight.
24 minutes ago (11:56 AM)
Unless you’re eating 3.5 POUNDS of tofu, it’s not going to top the damage done by four ounces of beef.
1 hour ago (11:13 AM)
Just because you love cheese you cannot rationalize it’s carbon footprint, if it’s 3rd, it’s third. Also the study seems flawed, to my understanding it compares 4 oz. to 4 oz. not serving to serving. Tofu may be a third of beef but lets have a contest, I’ll eat 4 oz. of beef per meal and you eat 4 oz. of tofu per meal and we’ll see who quits first.
22 minutes ago (11:58 AM)
Maybe for you. I require meat at least three times a week. It’s too hard to get all the necessary protein from a vegetarian diet.
1 hour ago (11:15 AM)
Why can you not advise all people to radically reduce consumption of meat products? Eating meat once a week is enough.
11 minutes ago (12:08 PM)
or a milk allergy
27 minutes ago (11:53 AM)
That’s usually a sign of lactose intolerance.
44 minutes ago (11:35 AM)
Milk causes my personal methane production to increase drastically. Not a good choice.
43 minutes ago (11:36 AM)
Great article
42 minutes ago (11:37 AM)
buying organic isn’t just about what goes into our own bodies, for us, it’s also about what goes into the air, the ground and the water.
4 minutes ago (12:16 PM)
I’m an organs farmer. They do help the soil,only if plowed under. That is a waste of crop. Nitrogen is the hardest to replace. All green plantings need it, the wider the leaves the more nitrogen.
37 minutes ago (11:42 AM)
Most legumes grow quickly, fixing nitrogen to the soil which benefits crops that follow.
34 minutes ago (11:46 AM)
There need not be any concern for protein if one is eating whole vegan foods. Protein is in all vegetable foods — rice, wheat, oranges, potatoes, etc., and you get plenty of it by simply eating sufficient calories. You don’t even need beans to thrive. So,the whole idea of discussing protein sources as if protein were somehow special or more important than carbohydrate is a waste of time.
7 minutes ago (12:13 PM)
Most how had to drink milk in school are living the longest. School prior to the 1970′s
34 minutes ago (11:46 AM)
Sorry, beans are better than milk and go organic!
34 minutes ago (11:46 AM)
I do not care what they say and no remedy helps, Beans make me a miserable man and although the best choice the results of eating it are close to solitary confinement. Otherwise I am on the right track with the good in this list.
33 minutes ago (11:47 AM)
Vegetarian ALL the way, baby!!! 14 years now. But I eat a few local eggs and a little tiny bit of cheese sometimes. Lentils are awesome, hands down. They pack the nutrients, have the flavor and are EASY to cook (no soaking and done in 30 minutes or less).
9 minutes ago (12:11 PM)
huh? 26 grams a protein in a cup of oatmeal? hmmm… i think you confuse carbs with protein.
28 minutes ago (11:52 AM)
Americans are at practically zero risk of protein deficiency.
Another good source of protein is one you don’t think of: oats and oatmeal. An amazing 26 grams per cup, plus lots of minerals.
22 minutes ago (11:57 AM)
No quinoa?
21 minutes ago (11:59 AM)
The lowest impact protein would have to be mycoprotein like Quorn, which is made by culturing a fungus in the mold family in a sugar solution. Sugar, although not so healthy for us, can be produced very efficiently from sugar beets, sugar cane, corn, barley, rice, etc. The fungus upgrades the empty sugar calories into a high-quality complete protein.There are any number of fungal species, including yeasts and molds, that can be pressed into service to produce protein from sugar. Japanese miso paste is an example of a food that has been nutritionally upgraded by inoculation with particular yeast species.Then all we need is a cleverly engineered bacteria that makes glucose from carbon dioxide and either hydrogen or sunlight and water. Making sugar as efficiently as possible is the linchpin of the food system of the future. We can make just about any organic nutrient from sugar.
17 minutes ago (12:03 PM)
What’s wrong with genetically modified soybeans?
6 minutes ago (12:13 PM)
lack of carbon footprint does not make something good for you to eat. milk is not a good source of protein. bad article. and tofu may seem like a healthy option but does anyone know HOW it is made? not a natural process by any means. worse than cheese.
13 minutes ago (12:07 PM)
Sources?
15 minutes ago (12:05 PM)
Interesting, thanks.
Still leaves you eating more than a pound of beans at a sitting, though.
22 minutes ago (11:58 AM)
That protein-grain-mixing idea is pretty outdated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining
2 hours ago (10:39 AM)
Some problems:
Tofu, made from soy, is estrogenic. Thanks, I don’t want my protein monkeying with my hormones.
Beans are not an excellent source of protein. A 100g (about 3.5 oz) serving of beans has about 5g protein. The same size serving of chicken has about 25g protein. So, over three meals, let’s say you want to get 75g protein (a bit low for most active adults, but the math is easier), you could either have about 11oz chicken, or about 53oz of beans–that’s more than a pound per meal. Good luck.
Oh, and beans are not a complete protein source, meaning you also have to mix them with something like rice, which has about half as much protein by weight, so you’d need to eat well over a pound of beans and rice three times a day if that’s going to be your source of protein. I challenge anyone small enough for that to be an adequate intake of protein to shove that much food down their throat.
1 hour ago (10:59 AM)
Well if you stick toall these organic, non processed, etc food plan, your food budget will be higher than your mortgage.
Do these people know what they charge for all this organic stuff . And fresh fish here, runs about $25/lb and that’s the cheapest.
Who are they kidding.
25 minutes ago (11:55 AM)
Bc Most of us go to the store not the woods armed to the teeth
32 minutes ago (11:48 AM)
Because nutrionists are still corporate in thier idea of food production and how they think we eat.
1 hour ago (11:09 AM)
Why is their no wild game listed on this? Low fat, low impact on the environment, actually GOOD for the environment in some cases , such as harvesting feral hogs.