Professor Tim Lang, advisor to the Government on issues such as food security and obesity, marked the UN’s World Food Day with a speech urging people to cut down on meat and dairy.

He said “the world could be eating its way to starvation”, by eating foods which are unsustainable and inefficient because of the amount of resources they require to produce them. In particular, meat and dairy require more resources than any other foods.

He added, “We must transform ourselves from being passive consumers to active consumers. We need to lobby government for change, eat less meat and fewer dairy products, and garden more“.

There are many recommendations for how we can reduce our carbon footprint, and changing our diets is by far one of the easiest. You can do it right now and it involves no extra cost, in fact it is cheaper. Costs associated with solar panels, hybrid cars, insulating your home, replacing electronic goods with energy efficient ones, buying a bicycle etc do not come in to it. All it involves is walking down a different aisle in the supermarket.

And what’s more, if you can start by cutting down and then move to a completely meat-and-dairy-free diet, you can massively reduce your carbon footprint.  The impact is real, and far more significant than the small fixes, such as turning lights off, car pooling orturning the thermostat down. A vegetarian diet is responsible for 50% less greenhouse gas emissions than a meat-based diet, and a vegan diet is responsible for 87% less! (read more). Why not give it a go?

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