A Vegan Diet: Eating for the Environment

Choose oat, soy, almond, or other plant-based alternatives to help cut back on land and water usage. An Oxford study showed that producing a glass of cow’s milk a day for a year requires 10 times the amount of land required to produce the same amount of oat milk. The same study found that all plant-based milk requires significantly less water to produce than cow’s milk, with oat milk using the least amount of water. 

Dairy has been linked to early death and increased risk of ovarian, lung, breast, and other cancers. Men who consume three servings of dairy a day have a 141 percent higher risk of death due to prostate cancer. 

Eliminating red and processed meat from the diet can lead to a reduced risk for heart disease, diabetes, and colorectal cancer, according to a study in the British Medical Journal Open. The same study showed that participants who consumed the least amount of red and processed meat also used 0.45 tons less of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

It takes 660 gallons of water to make a single burger. By comparison, the average person uses 17 gallons of water when they shower. One pound of beef uses 1,799 gallons of water, compared to one pound of soybeans which require 216 gallons of water. Livestock production also pollutes water with antibiotics and uses 75 percent of Earth’s agricultural land. 

The Earth Day Network and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication released a report that found more than half of Americans surveyed said they would eat more plant-based foods if they had more information about the environmental impacts of their food choices. 

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