Vegetarisch dieet is minder efficient voor milieu dan mild vleesdieet
 

Toch effe wat tegengewicht bieden, want ik ben, zoals alle primaten, een vleeseter:

Diet With A Little Meat Uses Less Land Than Many Vegetarian Diets

A low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But adding some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency, Cornell researchers suggest.



This deduction stems from 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.

The study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, is the first to examine the land requirements of complete diets.

The researchers compared 42 diets with the same number of calories and a core of grains, fruits, vegetables and dairy products (using only foods that can be produced in New York state), but with varying amounts of meat (from none to 13.4 ounces daily) and fat (from 20 to 45 percent of calories) to determine each diet's "agricultural land footprint."

They found a fivefold difference between the two extremes.

"A person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food," said Christian Peters, M.S. '02, Ph.D. '07, a Cornell postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences and lead author of the research. "A high-fat diet with a lot of meat, on the other hand, needs 2.11 acres."

"Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use," said Peters.

The reason is that fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland, he explained. Meat and dairy products from ruminant animals are supported by lower quality, but more widely available, land that can support pasture and hay. A large pool of such land is available in New York state because for sustainable use, most farmland requires a crop rotation with such perennial crops as pasture and hay.

Thus, although vegetarian diets in New York state may require less land per person, they use more high-valued land. "It appears that while meat increases land-use requirements, diets including modest amounts of meat can feed more people than some higher fat vegetarian diets," said Peters.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1008130203.htm

Alles hangt natuurlijk ook van de gebruikte technologie af. De voetafdruk van de gemiddelde middeleeuwse lijfeigene was een stuk groter dan die van de moderne Vlaming.

2

Overigens, dat tegengewicht waarvan sprake valt eigenlijk vies tegen als je het artikel tot het einde leest:

Alleen maar een licht tegengewicht hé. Ik eet niet veel vlees. Niet meer dan een kippenboutje per dag, wat ongeveer neerkomt op die 2 ounces. Maar ik lust wel mijn kippenboutje.

Ik eet ook niet zoveel vlees (is behoorlijk duur hier ook), maar als ik vlees op tafel zet, dan wel goed :-)