Vegetarians rejoice! While most of you may have heard that plant-based diets can be really beneficial for you health-wise, now there's even more reason for you to adopt it. Apparently, it can help save the planet too. The study, published last week in the journal Nature found that with the continued Western diet rich in red meat intake, the environmental pressures of the food system could increase by up to 90% by 2050, "exceeding key planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity beyond which Earth's vital ecosystems could become unstable," according to study author Marco Springmann.
"It could lead to dangerous levels of climate change with higher occurrences of extreme weather events, affect the regulatory function of forest ecosystems and biodiversity ... and pollute water bodies such that it would lead to more oxygen-depleted dead zones in oceans," Springmann said. "If the whole world, which continues to grow, eats more like us, the impacts are staggering, and the planet simply can't withstand it," said Sharon Palmer, a registered dietitian nutritionist.
Palmer noted, "research consistently shows that drastically reducing animal food intake and mostly eating plant foods is one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce your impact on the planet over your lifetime, in terms of energy required, land used, greenhouse gas emissions, water used and pollutants produced."
