Swapping the conventional meat and dairy products that make up a typical European diet for insect meal and laboratory-grown produce could cut food-related greenhouse gases, as well as water and land use, by more than 80 per cent, a study suggests.
Food production has huge environmental impacts, resulting in more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. The clearance of land for farms is also a key driver of biodiversity loss, while some lakes, rivers and groundwater supplies are emptied via irrigation.
To assess ways to lessen this impact, at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and her colleagues have looked at the potential environmental effects of switching to 鈥渘ovel and future foods鈥�.
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鈥淲hat we are looking at are foods that are novel in their production technology, like cultured meat or cultured milk,鈥� says Mazac.
Mazac is part of a group at the University of Helsinki that has been doing life-cycle assessments of the environmental impacts of such foods, including the effects of their processing, transport and waste disposal.
Her team used the analyses to calculate the potential benefits of switching to these foods, assuming people are willing to make the dietary changes, compared with foods that are typically consumed in Europe.
Their results suggest that an 鈥渙ptimised diet鈥� of novel foods could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 83 per cent, water use by 84 per cent and land use by 87 per cent.
鈥淲e are seeing some pretty significant reductions in impacts,鈥� says Mazac.
Numerous studies have also shown that eating less meat and dairy would greatly reduce environmental harm.
In line with this, the team found swapping to a vegan diet would cut greenhouse emissions by 84 per cent, water use by 82 per cent and land use by 80 per cent.
Opting for lab-grown meat, rather than a vegan diet, may allow people to eat foods that more closely resemble their current diet. 鈥淚t would be a way for someone to consume their fast-food burger, but save on land use and water use and global warming potential,鈥� says Mazac.
Some of these products are already widely available, such as Quorn, grown from fungal cells. Others, such as lab-grown meat, are only made on a very small scale. The team鈥檚 analysis also included some foods not widely eaten in Europe, such as insects, kelp and the algae spirulina and chlorella.
Speaking of the results, at City, University of London, says: 鈥淚t鈥檚 almost too good to be true.鈥�
If these findings are correct, the research has immense policy implications, he says. However, Lang thinks these environmental benefits won鈥檛 come about by consumers making such dietary changes voluntarily. These benefits will therefore only play out if governments and companies essentially forced these foods on consumers, he says.
Not everyone is convinced by how the research was carried out. 鈥淸The study] makes a huge number of very optimistic assumptions,鈥� says at Sussex University, UK. Even if the analyses of the 鈥渇uture foods鈥�, currently produced in small quantities, are correct, they might not apply to mass-produced products, he says.
鈥淭his study recognises that much of the life-cycle assessment work on cultured meat remains rather speculative,鈥� says at the University of Oxford, whose research suggests cultured meat won鈥檛 necessarily reduce greenhouse emissions.
But cultured meat isn鈥檛 a major part of the diet envisaged in the study, says Lynch. The research is instead more based on plant-based proteins and other protein sources, such as insect meal and microbial protein.
鈥淭he increased recognition that food production has an impact on the environment is a good thing,鈥� says Lynch. 鈥淏ut nobody eats a diet that is optimised solely for maximal efficiency of production and nutrient intake. We also have to factor in tastes, food cultures and connection to agricultural landscapes.鈥�
Nature Food
