By Hillary V.
Now that you know how and why to eat sustainably by reducing animal products in your diet and focusing on buying local, let’s talk about all of the benefits of making this important change! You can make a real change in the world, even if you do it imperfectly, by adjusting your diet.
You will reduce your water impact!
One pound of beef requires anywhere between 2,000 and 8,000 gallons of water to produce, including water required to feed the cows grass or grain. Similarly, one gallon of cow’s milk requires 1,950 gallons of water to produce. Conversely, one pound of tofu requires 302 gallons of water to produce, and it requires 290 gallons of water to produce one pound of unprocessed oats.1
Overall, the average person eating a plant-based diet can save 162,486 gallons of water a year!2
We can make more food!
Approximately 26% of the world’s land is dedicated to grazing livestock and around 33% is dedicated to growing feed for the livestock. OneGreenPlanet predicts that while one acre of land can produce 250 pounds of beef, one acre could produce 50,000 pounds of carrots or 53,000 pounds of potatoes.3
You will reduce your carbon footprint!
A recent study at the University of Oxford found that cutting meat and dairy products from a diet can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by 73%!4 In fact, a study comparing America’s Dietary Guidelines against a Guideline promoting a vegetarian diet found that the vegetarian plan had half the carbon footprint of the guidelines that include meat.5 In addition, by buying local at farmer’s markets or participating in a Community-Supported Agriculture (aka CSA) you can reduce the transportation footprint of your food. If you want to calculate your own carbon footprint and see how much changing your diet or buying local could impact it, check out the CoolClimate tool here: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/index
Overall, every choice you make to be more sustainable can be both challenging and rewarding. Practice patience with yourself and others. We encourage you to take a hard look at what you eat, where it comes from, and it’s true cost to both the environment and our health. But also, have fun with it! Check out some very cool and exciting vegan blogs here – there is something for everyone!
Notes:
1- For a breakdown of the protein content of each of these options, see this article by the University of California Los Angeles.
2 – Check out an article on sustainability and plant-based diets here.
3 – See the article linked above.
4 – See a Science Magazine article on Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers here.
5 – See an article by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine here.
Sustainable Saplings 