Plant-Based Diet Outperforms Mediterranean Diet for Environmental Benefits

New research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has found that completely plant-based diets can have up to a 44% lower total environmental impact than Mediterranean diets–which are similar but contain small amounts of meat, fish and dairy. The findings led the authors to highlight how replacing animal products for plant sources of protein can be the most impactful dietary change for promoting ecological benefits.

The researchers applied Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to one-week sample meal plans for both the plant-based and Mediterranean diets, making sure that each adhered to national nutritional recommendations and were matched for calories and macronutrient levels. The environmental assessments included all the processes involved in the foods’ production, such as agricultural production, transport, processing, packaging, and home preparation.

They found that plant-based diets had significantly lower impacts across a range of environmental categories, including land use, ozone depletion and global warming, terrestrial acidification, and fine particulate formation. The total combined environmental impact was 44% lower for plant-based diets, despite the fact that the content of animal products in the Mediterranean diet was low (providing 10.6% of the total diet calories).

The findings are in alignment with previous research showing that meat, poultry, fish and dairy are some of the most damaging foods to the environment, while whole grain cereals, fruits, vegetables and legumes are among the most sustainable food products.

The researchers concluded that the study “clearly supports the concept that meat and dairy consumption plays a critical role, above all, in terms of damage to human health and ecosystems” and that “even a minimal-to-moderate content of animal foods has a consistent impact on the environmental footprint of a diet, and their reduction can elicit significant ecological benefits”.

References:

Filippin, D., Sarni, A. R., Rizzo, G., & Baroni, L. (2023). Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(5), 3797.

Clark, M., Springmann, M., Rayner, M., Scarborough, P., Hill, J., Tilman, D., Macdiarmid, J. I., Fanzo, J., Bandy, L., & Harrington, R. A. (2022). Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000