Another six planets needed to eat like most meat-loving countries

Another six planets would be needed if the whole world ate like the most meat-loving G20 countries, a major report on food related carbon emissions has found.

Australia and Argentina have the highest per capita carbon footprints of all countries in the G20, largely because of their high levels of red meat consumption.

If all the world ate like Argentina, an extra 6.4 planets would be needed to accomodate the land use and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study Diets for a Better Future, conducted by Swedish NGO Eat.

The UK comes up sixth within the G20 for the highest per capita carbon footprint, behind France, Canada and Brazil, and just ahead of the US.

Wealthier countries are eating at the expense of the rest of the world, the report’s author Brent Loken said, with the G20 countries accounting for 75 per cent of the global carbon food budget.

Almost everyone in the world would need to adopt a healthy, flexitarian diet in order to stay within the Paris Agreement goals of at least 2C and ideally 1.5C warming.

That means no more than five servings of animal-sourced foods a week, according to guidelines drawn up by scientists last year, and around 2,500 calories a day of mostly healthy, plant based foods, with red meat in particular kept to a minimum.

Such a diet would protect human health and help reduce soaring levels of obesity, as well as helping the environment.

Global food production accounts for approximately 24 per cent of annual greenhouse gas emissions, comparably to global electricity production.

Nearly half comes from livestock production and rotting food waste, both of which produce potent methane. The rest comes from rice production, agriculture practices, fertilizer use, and the conversion of carbon sequestering land for agriculture.

“All of these big global agreements and commitments that we've signed up for, we won't be able to achieve them unless we start to tackle the food that we're eating,” said Mr Loken, the global food lead at WWF.

Of all the diets in the G20, only Turkey is below the threshold for the carbon budget, which Mr Loken attributed to its Mediterranean style diet. Meanwhile, Italy has around four times the recommended consumption of red meat compared and twice the amount of dairy.

No country is reaching its optimal intake of legumes and nuts, both products with a relatively low carbon footprint compared to nutritional benefit.

Mr Loken says governments should change their official dietary guidelines to take account of climate change.

The UK Government’s climate change advisers say it should encourage a 20 per cent reduction in the consumption of red meat and dairy, which would still be far above the red meat consumption recommended by the planetary health diet.

“If you can get the G20 to shift, you can start to allow for this transformation,” Mr Loken said.

The report warns that there is a danger developing countries’ diets are moving in the same direction as unhealthy “Western” diets.  Mr Loken argued that the speed of shifts in diet proved that the trends were reversible.

“If you look at many countries such as China, the move toward an animal-based diet has happened in a generation,” he said. “If that shift is happening the wrong way, then it can happen the other way as well."

“In the UK, you will find that it wasn't that many years ago where people weren't eating like this. Your grandparents will have had meat once or twice a week because it was a luxury item.”