Plant Rich Diets and Why Eating Less Meat Has a Bigger Impact Than Organic
A common default position when discussing sustainable eating tends to focus on organic/conventional debates, as though that’s the binary choice before us. Spoiler alert: it’s not. I’ve grown my own food and considered what to eat longer than most people have heard of a carbon footprint, and the data is emphatically clear on where your choices have the biggest impact. If you care about lowering the environmental impacts of your diet, the best choice you can make is to eat less meat, and especially less beef and lamb. Organic versus conventionally grown is not irrelevant, but the difference pales in comparison to not eating meat.
This isn’t a guilt trip about going vegan tomorrow. Unless you’re vegan that’s unlikely to happen anyway. But acknowledging that radically cutting your meat intake has a far bigger impact than buying only organic requires letting go of how you think food should be produced to accept what the data actually says about food and climate change. It also means letting go of black and white choices and making dietary changes that align with how large or small the impacts actually are.
Food production is responsible for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions (Our World in Data), and different foods have vastly different greenhouse gas footprints. When you start looking at data about food and climate change properly, the distance between meat and plant food becomes so wide that it dwarfs almost every other factor about how that food was produced.
I taught geography for thirty years, spending much of that time explaining to students how people impact the natural world. None of the science around food is complex or subtle, but like most environmental issues it does demand we look at the numbers rather than what sounds good or what we want to be true. What the numbers tell us is that small shifts away from highest impact foods are much more impactful than switching everything we eat to organic versions of those same high impact foods.
How Different Foods Compare on Carbon Emissions
Land use and methane: Beyond direct emissions from fossil fuels used in production and transportation, food emissions are driven primarily by land use changes and methane emissions. Beef is many times higher in greenhouse gas emissions per kg than almost all plant foods (Our World in Data), not because cows are evil but because the way we farm them at industrial scale is profoundly land intensive. Cattle consume tons of plant material to produce a relatively small amount of meat because they’re inefficient converters of plant protein to animal protein. In order to feed cattle (or the grains they are often fed), you need to clear extensive lands. Plus they emit methane during digestion which has a higher warming potential than CO2 over short timeframes.
The biggest gap isn’t organic vs conventional. When you start looking at graphs comparing the carbon footprint of different foods, the differences aren’t marginal. They’re orders of magnitude. A kilogram of beef produces roughly 20 to 60 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions depending on how it was raised. Vegetables hover around 1 to 3 kg CO2e per kg. Chicken and grains or pulses fall somewhere in between vegetables and chicken.
The Research
The IPCC discusses shifting diets as an option for demand side emissions reductions (IPCC) if we eat fewer emissions intensive foods. Plant based diets are reviewed in peer reviewed literature (ScienceDirect American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) showing overall patterns of eating more plant foods and fewer animal products have lower emissions across multiple metrics.
Emissions aren’t the only concern. Food is a leading cause of environmental pressures across land use and climate (Our World in Data). Land use is important because food expansion comes from deforestation, drained wetlands, or conversion of grasslands that sequester large amounts of carbon. Other impacts of concern include water use, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from fertilizers, soil erosion, and biodiversity losses. Animal agriculture significantly outscores plant food production on these impacts, although they can vary significantly by location and production practices as well.
What does Plant Rich Mean?
By plant rich, I don’t mean eliminating all animal products from your diet. Rather I mean your most frequent and largest meals come from plant sources. Meat or fish a couple times a week instead of every day or with every meal. Chicken or seafood instead of red meat when you do eat animal products. Cheese and yogurt as toppings or additions rather than protein sources. Using meat as a flavouring rather than the centre of every dinner.
Less meat isn’t described as optimal (Our World In Data) but as the highest impact action an individual can take. That doesn’t mean cutting everything out immediately. Start with highest impact meats. If you eat beef regularly and switch one meal to chicken, you’ll likely improve your food emissions more than switching everything else you eat to organic.
Eating less meat raises protein concerns for a lot of people, but there are plenty of plant foods that can provide complete protein when eaten in combination. Beans, lentils, chickpeas, peas, nuts, seeds, and whole grains all contribute protein to your diet. You don’t need to be perfect about amino acid pairing. It just means eating a variety of protein rich plants over the course of a day.
| Current Eating Pattern | Plant Rich Alternative | Reduction in Environmental Impact | Things To Know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beef every dinner | Beef once weekly, chicken twice weekly, beans/plants other meals | 60-70% less emissions from your meals | Start with one meal you already enjoy that’s plant based. Something you don’t feel like you’re sacrificing for. |
| Chicken with every meal | Chicken 3-4 times weekly, fish once weekly, plant based meals the rest of the time | Reducing your meat consumption by half can still give you a 40-50% reduction. | You can use chicken to flavour meals rather than being the star. If every meal has veggies and grains or legumes, one chicken breast can often stretch three meals. |
| I eat meat with every meal | Eating animal products once daily at most | Simply reducing the frequency you eat meat can cut your food emissions 50-60% | Eating plant based breakfasts and lunches is easier for lots of people than changing dinner |
How do you make meat less central to your diet? In my kitchen, it was a gradual process over years. I started by having one or two meals each week that were entirely plant based. Something like a big pot of lentil soup or bean vegetable curry that felt like comfort food rather than deprivation. Once that wasn’t shocking to my system I started using smaller amounts of meat in mixed dishes. Little bits of chicken thrown into a big pot of vegetable grain soup. A few slices of bacon to add flavour to a dish that’s primarily beans.
I encourage you to find plant based meals you love, rather than trying to replace meat dishes with meat substitutes.
| Mistake | You Don’t Have to ______________, Just ______________ |
|---|---|
| 1 | buy all your food organic or nothing changes |
| Focus entirely on organic vs conventional while ignoring what you’re actually eating. Organic beef still has a multiple times higher carbon footprint than conventionally grown vegetables. Organic apples aren’t going to have nearly the impact of organic beef. |
| If your goal is less climate impact pay more attention to what you eat than whether it’s certified organic. Switching from conventional beef to organic beef might reduce your impact by 10-20%. Switching from beef to chicken reduces your dinner emissions by 2/3 or around 70%. Switching from beef to beans reduces your meal emissions by around 90% or more. |
| Mistake | You Don’t Have to ______________, Just ______________ |
|---|---|
| 2 | replace every meal with a plant based meat alternative |
| Try to recreate meat based meals exactly with plant alternatives. They don’t taste the same! Store bought burgers and sausages are processed foods made with fat and chemicals so they’ll taste much more like meat than roasted carrots or salad. Learn how real cuisines that eat mostly plants flavour their food. A good vegan dal doesn’t taste like meat and doesn’t need to. |
| If you’re used to meat at every meal, going vegan overnight is a huge shock to your system. Try using meat as a seasoning rather than a main dish. Cook rice and beans with a little bacon instead of ground beef. The change in emissions is nearly as large and it lets you eat meat without centering every meal around it. |
| Mistake | You Don’t Have to ______________, Just ______________ |
|---|---|
| 3 | go vegan overnight |
| Stop eating all animal products right now. Most people do better with smaller changes they can maintain. One plant based meal a week is better than trying to be fully vegan and failing. Once that’s easy change another meal. |
| I didn’t completely eliminate meat from my diet until I was cooking for myself most meals every day for years. If you want to eat less meat but don’t feel ready to give it up completely, that’s fine! |
| Mistake | You Don’t Have to ______________, Just ______________ |
|---|---|
| 4 | become a culinary genius |
| If you waste less food, it doesn’t matter how that food was produced. Households in the UK throw away enough food to make twice the meals we throw away each week(UKHarvest). We pay UK farmers £19 billion pounds and produce enough food waste to cost us £19 billion pounds at the Checkout (DEFRA). Household food waste is listed as one of the top climate change mitigation strategies by a number of scores (Project Drawdown). |
| You don’t have to become a perfect zero waste cook. Buy less food and pay more attention to the food you have. Before tossing overripe fruit consider smoothies or baking with them. If you cook only from scratch rather than throwing frozen burgers in the microwave you’ll automatically reduce your waste. |
| Mistake | You Don’t Have to ______________, Just ______________ |
|---|---|
| 5 | eat nuts every day |
| Eat only locally grown plant foods all year round. Plant foods have dramatically lower emissions than meat on average, but there’s still variation. Locally grown fruits and vegetables almost always win on emissions no matter what else you’re comparing them to. But if you live somewhere with a short growing season you’ll still have to eat some foods shipped in from elsewhere. Focus on reducing your meat consumption first. |
Most studies look only at greenhouse gas emissions. There’s substantial variation when you include water use, land use change, pollution impacts, and other factors. Meat usually comes out on the high end in these cases too, but it is possible for conventionally grown plant foods to have higher total impacts than organic meat.
Know The Facts
This focus on reducing meat isn’t because I hate cows or think only ‘granolas’ eat crackers. Plant based diets are repeatedly analysed in peer reviewed studies (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) that compare dietary patterns with environmental impacts. Plant based diets consistently outperform meat based diets in terms of climate impacts and most other measures of environmental sustainability we care about. Eating mostly plants doesn’t mean your diet has zero impact. It means your diet has dramatically less impact than average.
Growing food yourself naturally puts you close to the farm to fork end of supply chains. When you’re harvesting potatoes or pulling garlic to cure, seasonal eating isn’t a big deal. We eat seasonally because our garden produces more of some things in summer than others. Most of what grows in our garden are plants. Even a tiny urban garden can supply salad leaves, herbs, and some vegetables that can turn a salad from standard issue to something special.
Five Common Mistakes when shifting eating habits
Evidence
Different kinds of studies reach similar conclusions from different angles. Drawing conclusions from individual studies rather than the overall evidence leads us back to many of these mistakes.
Environmental impact of foods are typically assessed using life cycle analysis. These follow the impacts of a food from production through processing, transport, storage, cooking, and disposal. All the common animal foods we eat have far higher greenhouse gas emissions than the average plant food. Beef and lamb are the clear worst offenders for most impacts we care about. But pasture based chicken and dairy are far from the better choice they’re often assumed to be, even when compared to conventionally raised grains, legumes, and vegetables.
Meta analyses take many individual studies and statistically combine the results. These have confirmed the patterns seen in individual life cycle analyses hold true across study types, geographic regions, and varying methods for estimating food emissions.
Plant based diets are in the IPCC (IPCC) as mitigation options. This isn’t because some scientists decided to plug the vegan agenda. Dietary change is one of the few individual actions that our working group concludes can make a meaningful difference to climate mitigation if a large fraction of the global population adopts it.
We waste enough food in the UK (BioteCH4) to feed everyone who is food insecure. Reducing food waste is often listed as one of the highest impact climate actions(Project Drawdown) you can take. If you toss half your veggie scrap instead of composting them, that creates more impact than their production emissions compared to organic fruits and vegetables.
Who Does this Apply To?
Renters. Plant rich eating isn’t about having a big garden or home oven. Many plant based meals are one pot cooking that work just fine in a teeny kitchen. Beans, lentils, and grains store almost indefinitely in tiny spaces. You don’t need a garden to reap these benefits, but if you grow herbs in a windowsill you can throw fresh herbs in any dish to make a cheaper plant based meal feel special.
People on a budget. Eating more plants can reduce your grocery bills. Part of this is avoiding expensive processed meat substitutes. But eating mostly plants means spending more of your grocery budget on whole foods. Dried beans, rice, seasonal vegetables are among the cheapest food per calorie you can buy. How much less you spend will depend on what you’re cutting back on, but the average UK household spends £60 per week on food (Bord Bia). Shifting to plant rich eating will likely reduce your bill.
People with health issues. It depends on the issue. But unless you’ve been told to eat more meat by your doctor the answer is probably yes. For people who need to watch sodium, plant rich diets where you actually cook your food instead of eating packaged meals can improve health. Digestive issues may mean you have to be careful with some forms of beans and lentils at first, but focusing on well cooked vegetables is helpful there too. Diabetes responds well to many plant rich diets. Talk to your doctor and see what makes sense for you.
People in rural locations. Outside cities, you may have better access to farms selling plant foods direct, or growing your own might be easier. But you might also have fewer ready made options for plant based meals which means cooking from scratch is more important. Rural people have traditionally preserved the glut from summer gardens so eating seasonally can work well with plant rich eating too.
The Benefits of Plant Rich Eating
Lower greenhouse gas emissions: The biggest. If you eat meat every day and switch to plant rich eating with only occassional meat your food emissions can drop 20-40% or more.
Save money: There are expensive meat substitutes. But if you focus on whole foods eating plants can save you money at the grocery store. AverageUK Households Spend £60 Weekly on Food(Bord Bia), eat plants can reduce that number. How much you save will depend on what you cut back on, but you should have enough left over to buy some organic foods.
Health: Plant based diets are associated with better health outcomes. Fewer heart attacks, some forms of cancer, type 2 diabetes. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why yet, but it doesn’t seem to matter what plant based diet you follow, so long as you’re eating mostly plants you get the benefit.
Food security: The world can feed more people if we rely less on animal agriculture because growing plants to feed people is more efficient than growing them to feed animals we eat. This doesn’t help you feed your family unless you live on a farm with livestock, but it does mean shifting towards more plant rich diets doesn’t threaten global food security.
Skills: Cooking more plants usually requires learning new skills. Even if you’re plant rich already you’ll probably learn something new from exploring cuisines that focus on plants. I knew how to cook rice before I started planting cooking, but I never would have discovered fried rice if I hadn’t started eating more plant rich meals.
Seasonality: Plant rich diets often lead to eating seasonally, especially if you start seeking out seasonal veggies or growing some of your own food. Even if you don’t eat seasonal 100% of the time, you may find you pay more attention to seasons and food.
Week 1 -2 : Know Thy Food
The first step to shifting your eating habits is understanding your current habits. If you eat steak and eggs for every meal it doesn’t help to start with Meatless Monday.
Track what you eat for one week without changing anything. How many meals are primarily meat? How many meals are primarily fish? How many meals are plant based?
Don’t think you can tell just by looking in the fridge. Write it down. You might be surprised.
Once you have a baseline you can start identifying meals that would be easy to switch to plant based. Pasta with sauce? Check your labels and see if there’s a vegetable pasta you like. Rice and beans? Probably plant based already. Hearty soups? Beans or lentils can make a comforting soup that fills you up.
Weeks 3-6 Plant Based one meal a week
Once you know what you’re eating start with one plant based meal a week. Pick something that sounds good, that you really want to eat. Don’t pick anything you think you should eat because it’s healthy. Pick something you’ll enjoy. Once that feels okay add another plant based meal.
This could be pasta with vegetables instead of garlic bread. It could be lentil tacos or chickpea curry. Don’t substitute mock meats and convince yourself that isn’t changing what you eat. Explore how different cuisines use plants to create flavour. Find plant based meals you love.
Weeks 7-9 Plant Based half your meals.
Cut your meat consumption in half. If you used to eat meat with every meal try having plant based breakfasts and lunches. Feeling hungry? Learn how to cook beans so they aren’t crunchy. Meat is a flavouring rather than a main dish. Half a chicken breast can flavor lots of veggies and grains. Small amounts of bacon can add a lot of flavour to beans.
Ask yourself how you feel after eating. Are you hungry an hour after finishing? What’s missing? If it’s constantly meat your meals need more protein, fat or calories of some sort. Experiment until it feels like enough food.
Months 2-3 Eat plant rich.
Maybe you don’t eat meat at all. Maybe you eat mostly plants but allow yourself treats of fish or chicken or steak on occasion. If your diet is dominated by plants you’ll likely cut your food emissions in half or more.
Start paying attention to seasons. Especially if you’re buying direct from farmers plant based meals will probably shift with the seasons because most of what grows is plants. Learn how to cook seasonal produce so it doesn’t feel like you’re eating Brussels sprouts all winter. Even a small kitchen garden will help you eat seasonally.
Months 3-6 Iterate.
If you’re eating plant based meals you enjoy you can stop here. Many people find they naturally shift towards being almost entirely plant based with occasional treats. Others settle into eating plant rich most of the time with animal products once daily or several times per week. Both are huge improvements over the standard Western meat centered diet and will drastically reduce your diet’s impact on climate change.
Start developing your own recipes instead of following everything to a T in cookbooks or online. Once you know how to roast vegetables and season rice you can throw together meals without needing a recipe. That makes maintaining this eating pattern far easier than following someone else’s meal plans.
