If you’re a typical westerner, you ate nearly 100 kilograms of meat last year. This was almost certainly the costliest part of your diet, especially in environmental terms. The clamour for people to eat less meat to save the planet is growing ever louder. “Less meat = less heat”, proclaimed Paul McCartney in the run-up to last December’s conference on global warming in Copenhagen. And this magazine recently recommended eating less meat as a way to reduce our environmental footprint.

If less is good, wouldn’t none be better? You might think so. “In the developed world, the most effective way to reduce the environmental impact of diet, on a personal basis, is to become vegetarian or vegan,” says Annette Pinner, chief executive of the Vegetarian Society in the UK.

Read more… (New Scientist)