The choice to avoid meat and eat a vegetable diet has never seemed so virtuous and necessary. Between the intrinsic cruelty of industrial livestock production and the climate footprint of livestock – which according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is 14.5% of all greenhouse gases worldwide, significantly larger than that of plant agriculture, it has become increasingly difficult to place to defend. meat and animal-derived foods in our diet. Jonathan Safran Foer, the novelist who became an animal rights activist, captured this thinking best in his 2019 non-fiction book, “We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast”. As he writes, ‘We can not hold the kind of meals we knew, nor the planet we knew. We need to let go of some eating habits or let the planet go. It’s so simple, so loaded. ”
An essential part of this argument is the statement that food of animals, and especially red and processed meat, is not only bad for the planet, but harmful to the people who eat it. As the journalist Michael Pollan encouraged in his bestseller “In Defense of Food” in 2008, we should therefore eat “mostly plants”. It has become the only dietary advice that most nutritionists seem to agree on. This creates a win-win proposal: By eating mostly (or even exclusively) fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, while extracting proteins and fats from plant sources, we maximize the possibility of leading a long and healthy life. , while also doing what’s right for the planet.
But is it that simple? An increasing amount of evidence suggests that this is not the case for many of us.
The other food movement that has gained increasing acceptance over the past decade is the carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet – in short, keto – which has appeared as a direct response to the explosive increase in the incidence of obesity and diabetes. More than 70% of American adults are now obese or overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention; almost one in 10 is severely obese, and more than one in 10 is diabetic. An inevitable implication of these numbers is that conventional wisdom about weight loss – eating less, moving your body more – has failed tens of millions of Americans.
These are the people who may sooner or later experiment with alternative approaches and venture into the realm of fads. They may try plant-based foods – vegetarian or even vegan – and if those are not making it healthy again, then try keto or one of the many variations on a low-carb diet, from the original Atkins diet to the Southern Beach diet to paleo according to the latest trend, carnivore. If they find that an unconventional approach works for them, which enables them to achieve and maintain a relatively healthy weight without enduring hunger, it is their motivation to maintain it. But because this way of eating is easiest with food obtained from animals, they may believe that what is good for them (and even their children) is not good for the planet.