Eating a healthier diet rich in fruit and vegetables could actually be more harmful to the environment than consuming some meat, a US study has claimed.<\/p>\n
Lettuce is \u201cover three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon\u201d, according to researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University who analysed the impact per calorie of different foods in terms of energy cost, water use and emissions.<\/p>\n
Published in the Environment Systems and Decisions journal, the study goes against the grain of recent calls for humans to quit eating meat to curb climate change.<\/p>\n
Researchers did not argue against the idea people should be eating less meat, or the fact that livestock contributes to an enormous proportion of global emissions \u2013 up to 51 per cent according to some studies.<\/p>\n
But they found that eating only the recommended \u201chealthier\u201d foods prescribed in recent advice from the US Department of Agriculture increased a person\u2019s impact on the environment across all three factors \u2013 even when overall calorie intake was reduced.<\/p>\n
The experts examined how growing, processing and transporting food; sales and service; and household storage and use all take a toll on the environment for different foods.<\/p>\n
Paul Fischbeck, study co-author and CMU\u2019s professor of social and decisions sciences, said: \u201cLots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think.<\/p>\n
\u201cEggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n