Burgers and steaks hide costs that go far beyond a few more pounds on the scale: emissions of greenhouse gas and deforestation are just some of the prices the Earth pays whenever we purchase meat. But with an increasing demand and a fast-growing world population, will the Earth be able to sustain these costs for long?

 

Meat has for centuries been a fundamental part of our diet. Humans are omnivorous, so there is nothing wrong with craving and eating it, as long as it is in the right portions. But as exaggeration is part of today’s consumerist society, we have far exceeded those limits, with a production industry cranking out more meat than ever to meet the never-ending demand.

 

Troubles to our health, including obesity and higher risk of contracting bowel cancer, are not the only dangers deriving from this trend. Every bite we give to a steak, every Sunday roast served on the table, every super-cheap Big Mac burger we devour with greedy pleasure causes emissions of greenhouse gas which threaten global warming. But attention: this does not mean that we all need to turn our noses up at meat and devote ourselves to a purely vegetarian lifestyle. Simply, everyone shall be aware of the consequences a heavily meat-based diet leads to. And as this year’s Earth Day is approaching, this is a good time to start considering some changes.

 

In Britain, a person consumes an average of 79.9 kg of meat per year. Although this number is far higher in other countries such as the US, where that reaches 97.4 kg per head per year, it is still a lot compared to the worldwide average of 42 kg. Products coming from animals appear on our dishes every day, so often that they represent the 70% of the diet of the average person living in developed countries. Producing that amount of food requires very ample spaces: in fact, the area occupied by livestock and that reserved for their food production covers 26% of the world’s ice-free surface, which is 23 times more the land used to grow vegetables.

 

Sadly, the definition of “available ice-free surface” is not exclusive to endless and empty expanses of luxuriant green grass, but includes forestry areas, which are constantly being cleared for breeding purposes. On a global scale, approximately six million hectares of woodlands are uprooted every year to make room for livestock: that is, in simple terms, a surface twice the size of Belgium. The Amazon rainforest alone has lost more than 17% of its land in the last 50 years: that represents a huge threat for biodiversity, and means more carbon dioxide floating free in the atmosphere.

 

Above all these issues, however, there is still the one of greenhouse gas emissions. Let’s imagine for a second that the Earth was a giant apple. A huge, perfectly shaped green - not red, green apple. To this beautiful image, let’s now superimpose that of a caterpillar with 7.4 billion little paws, and try to picture it happily scampering off into the apple, crunching its juicy pulp with increasing appetite, and leaving it riddled. Is this a quite dramatic representation of the human impact on Earth? Yes. Does that rely to the truth at all? Indeed. Meat consumption is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than that generated from cars, trains, planes and ships together. Among the gases deriving from livestock, methane and nitrous dioxide emissions are listed as the most dangerous ones, with respectively 21 and 300 times more climate-changing powers than CO2.

 

With this current trend, the forecasts for the future are not looking much brighter:  in 2050, the world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion. If each one of these 9.7 billion individuals eats meat in the quantities that we are used to now, the consequences we’re currently experiencing will be taken to the extremes, with more land turned into farms, more animals being killed and more greenhouse gas emissions pushing climate change to critical levels. So basically, carrying on with this trend means giving shape to a world we don’t want to live in.

 

There is a very simple solution to avoid this dark future though, and that lies in decreasing these figures. In 2015, the Guardian newspaper made a short informative video which suggested that emissions coming from food could be halved if people living in the West cut their meat consumption to seven portions of chicken and two 85 grams portions of red meat per week. Sustainability is not about sacrifice, but about getting used to a healthier lifestyle. Just by cutting down a bit, the benefits for the planet would be enormous, and would reflect on our health as well. 

 

Eating a lot of red and processed meat, in fact, creates a series of issues in the human body which could be easily avoided by substituting them with proteins coming from other food. Pancreatic and bowel cancer, cardiovascular diseases, obesity: they are all consequences of extreme red meat-eating, because of its high amount of saturated fats. On the contrary, plant-based diets and general avoidance of red meat are proved to lower the chances of contracting any of the above diseases, therefore are more beneficial for our personal well-being.

 

The current situation puts us in front of the choice of living in an enormous farm-world or slightly changing our eating habits; in other words, respecting our planet or surrender to greed. At the moment, the globe’s temperature is already rising and no immediate change is possible, but saving the Earth from reducing itself to an apple’s core could be more than possible if everyone gave his contribution. Again, sustainability is just one step away from us: it is only necessary that everyone takes it.