A vegetarian diet could save millions of human lives
Environment — di Andrea Barolini
A study from the University of Oxford explains that if the world adopted a vegetarian diet, 7.3 million deaths could be prevented by 2050.
A vegetarian diet could save millions of human lives
A study from the University of Oxford explains that if the world adopted a vegetarian diet, 7.3 million deaths could be prevented by 2050.
If the entire world were to choose from now on to eat without meat or dairy products, more than eight million human lives could be saved by 2050. This is explained by a study conducted by the University of Oxford, according to which the widespread adoption of a vegetarian or vegan diet on a global scale would also make it possible to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, as well as save enormous sums of money.
The analysis was conducted by a group of researchers at the Martin School of the renowned English university and was published in the American scientific journal Pnas. "The economic, health and environmental potential is enormous," explained Marco Springmann, one of the authors.
Even just cutting back on meat: 5 million fewer deaths
The researchers envisaged several scenarios based on different dietary choices: the first takes into account current food consumption worldwide, the second what is currently recommended, and then they examined what would change if everyone were suddenly to become vegetarian or even vegan.
As it turns out, even a more balanced diet alone — one in which meat consumption was substantially reduced in favour of fruit and vegetables — would be enough to prevent 5.1 million deaths over the next 35 years. That figure would rise to 7.3 million with the adoption of a vegetarian diet, and to 8.1 million if people chose to go vegan.
A vegetarian diet: good for the environment too
But that is not all: reducing meat consumption — as explained by a recent study from the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden — would also make it possible to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions, thereby helping to slow climate change (which in turn will put agricultural production at risk, triggering a dramatic vicious cycle).
In particular, according to the University of Oxford, even a merely more balanced diet would be enough to bring about a 30 per cent reduction in polluting emissions linked to food production. Those reductions would reach 63 and 70 per cent respectively if everyone were to become vegetarian or vegan.
Savings of up to a trillion dollars a year
Both the climate and human health, then, would improve greatly if the world were to change its eating habits. In concrete terms, the British researchers say that at the very least, fruit and vegetable consumption should be increased immediately by 25 per cent, and red meat consumption reduced by 56 per cent.
This would also bring beneficial knock-on effects for the public finances of every country: the study estimates that — depending on the different scenarios — between 735 billion and one trillion dollars a year could be saved. This is because many treatments currently funded by national health services would be avoided.