Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 2,638
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Study finds veganism to be the most sustainable diet of all
A new peer-reviewed study has just been published by the Public Library of Science - the world’s largest journal, by number of papers published. 
Here are some key findings from the report;
Quote:
Food production is a major driver of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and land use, and dietary risk factors are contributors to non-communicable diseases. Shifts in dietary patterns can therefore potentially provide benefits for both the environment and health. We find 14 common sustainable dietary patterns across reviewed studies, with reductions as high as 70–80% of GHG emissions and land use, and 50% of water use (with medians of about 20–30% for these indicators across all studies) possible by adopting sustainable dietary patterns. Reductions in environmental footprints were generally proportional to the magnitude of animal-based food restriction. Dietary shifts also yielded modest benefits in all-cause mortality risk. Our review reveals that environmental and health benefits are possible by shifting current Western diets to a variety of more sustainable dietary patterns.
Of the 210 scenarios, 197 showed a reduction in environmental impacts when switching from baseline to alternative dietary patterns (sign test: p<0·0001), while thirteen scenarios showed an increase or no impact. The median changes in GHG emissions, land use, and water use, across all sustainable diet types, were -22%, -28%, and -18%, respectively. The largest environmental benefits across indicators were seen in those diets which most reduced the amount of animal-based foods, such as vegan (first place in terms of benefits for two environmental indicators), vegetarian (first place for one indicator), and pescatarian (second and third place for two indicators).
All studies showed positive health effects, ranging from <1% reduction in estimated mortality risk for vegetarian diets, to 19% for vegan diets, though some of these were not statistically significant.
Several considerations regarding environmentally sustainable eating are worth noting. Firstly, the production of food (i.e. the growing of crops and raising of livestock) is the primary driver of environmental impacts, as opposed to later stages such as transport and processing [92, 93]. While local and seasonal diets have advantages such as protecting local economies and crop diversity, efforts to reduce dietary-related environmental impacts should focus on reducing animal-based foods in high-consuming societies.
Our review showed that reductions above 70% of GHG emissions and land use, and 50% of water use, could be achieved by shifting typical Western diets to more environmentally sustainable dietary patterns. Medians of these impacts across all studies suggest possible reductions of between 20–30%. This review is the most recent and comprehensive to date, and the first to compare impacts across GHG emissions, land use, and water use.
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Full report download available here: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0165797
and now for an adapted version of my usual vegan post disclaimer: I truly don't post these to make people feel stupid or to belittle them! In the last couple of days, changes in world leadership have made many uneasy about the future of our planet - it appears that climate issues may all but be ignored in the US in the coming 4 years, and that affects us all. So I hope this post empowers people to begin to improve their lives through making their own changes, and to continue to foster care for our health and the environment in the face of other's apathy. Best wishes, and please keep discussion civil in this thread 
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So glad y'all doing the good work so i don't have to. Love meat!!
change this. just post the link in the warning tags, not the pic.