Is meat more sustainable than vegetables? According to new studies that consider nutritional value in the environmental impact assessment, this is not to be excluded.

Considering the nutritional aspects when talking about the environmental impacts of food is a point on which more and more scientists are fighting to assess the sustainability of food properly. This is especially true in light of the new studies that assessed food’s environmental impacts according to its nutritional value. The nutritional power of food is not all the same. Just think of the protein value of meat much higher than that of vegetables. It is precisely this that researchers emphasize because to have the same amount of protein from plants with lower protein quality, it is necessary to take many more, resulting in increased production and higher environmental impact. This is what emerges from a new study that, based on the protein quality of foods, has practically halved the environmental impact of meat and dairy products, compared to that of plant products, which has increased by almost 60%.

In 2016, an Italian study published in the Scientific Reports examined the nutritional values of various animal and plant foods, considering their contribution to essential amino acids to assess their environmental impact. These findings also confirmed that the environmental footprint of vegetables, legumes and cereals is no more beneficial than meat. Indeed, the environmental impact for some plants was even far worse due to their scarcity of essential amino acids. This entails an exaggerated increase in the amount of food to be eaten to obtain the complete amino acid profile, resulting in overproduction and a greater environmental impact.

“Our data show that the Environmental Footprint concept associated with the production of food containing animal or plant proteins must be reassessed based on the essential amino acid content”, the authors of the research comment: “The production of animal source foods has a lower environmental impact than previously determined, due to the higher intrinsic quality of animal proteins, which results in a lower quantity of food required and consequently a reduced environmental impact”.

To get the same amount of #protein as #meat, fish, eggs and dairy products from #vegetable #foods, you have to take in a lot more of them, increasing production and #EnvironmentalImpact. Click To Tweet

According to the scientists, comparing foods with different protein qualities, such as apples and nuts or meat and wheat, makes little sense and leads to distorted results because their different nutritional value does not make them directly comparable. The environmental footprint should not be calculated by considering only the amount of food, its calories or the intake of a single nutrient but by considering all the nutrients the human body needs. We therefore talk about nLCA, the evaluation of the nutritional life cycle, which is an LCA study in which the impact of food is not related to its mass but to its nutritional value.

It is therefore necessary to consider in the nLCA the quality of proteins and the digestibility and bioavailability of all bio-active substances and micronutrients to be integrated into the LCA assessment to have accurate and transparent results on food sustainability.

More and more scientists are claiming that the results of these studies in assessing sustainability to the overall quality of food and not only according to their quantity, must be taken into account in rewriting the 2030 Agenda for Global Sustainable Development, which is unjustly too strict today concerning those foods that can make the difference, such as meat and animal source foods.

According to the experts, only with the presence of animal foods of high nutritional value in the diet the correct intake of essential amino acids and nutrients can be efficiently guaranteed without overexploiting the environment. According to the omnivorous model, a varied and balanced diet with the appropriate mix of animal and plant foods is once again the right meeting point to ensure proper nutrition, good human health and low environmental impact.