Diet with a little meat uses less land than many veg diets

A new study by Cornell University researchers challenges the widely help assumption that a purely vegetarian diet is the most ecological way to eat.

For want of a better word I was “vegetarian” for a few years but am now a selective omnivore. I respect people who go vego but I also think think vegetarianism isn’t the solution to all our social, ethical or environmental problems. And that’s what this study seems to suggest.

The researchers say a low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But the report added an important caveat to this, that some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency.

“The findings of their new study, which concludes that if everyone in New York state followed a low-fat vegetarian diet, the state could directly support almost 50 percent more people, or about 32 percent of its population, agriculturally. With today’s high-meat, high-dairy diet, the state is able to support directly only 22 percent of its population, say the researchers, ” an article in Science Daily reports.

The study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, is the first to examine the land requirements of complete diets. See the article here:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008130203.htm