Why It Matters

The Big Picture

Food is a climate issue, and diet is the biggest food lever

Project Drawdown, the leading research clearinghouse ranking climate solutions by real-world impact, puts "plant-rich diets" among the most effective actions available, not because everyone needs to go vegan, but because animal agriculture, especially beef and other ruminant meat, is disproportionately resource-intensive.

• Producing beef generates roughly 33 times the greenhouse gas emissions of producing an equivalent amount of plant-based protein.
• Red meat accounts for about 30% of food-related emissions worldwide, while supplying only around 5% of the calories humanity eats.
• Cattle and other ruminants produce methane, a greenhouse gas with roughly 80 times the near-term warming power of CO₂.
• Pastureland for grazing covers more of the planet's land (about 3,400 million hectares) than any other single human activity.

Source: Project Drawdown: Improve Diets. Full citation list on our About & Sources page.

The Water Behind Your Food

How much water does your protein really use?

"Water footprint" measures every drop used to grow feed, water animals, and process food, and it varies enormously by protein source. Here's the comparison, in liters of water per kilogram produced:

Liters of water to produce one kilogram of each food (global averages, green + blue water). Source: Water Footprint Network / Mekonnen & Hoekstra (2012); see About & Sources for the full citation.

Eating Less, Not Zero

What the science actually recommends

The EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable diets, a joint effort by 37 scientists from 16 countries, recommends limiting red meat to about 14 grams a day (roughly 5.1 kg, or 11 lbs, a year). That's not zero. It's about one modest serving a week, with plant proteins filling most of the rest of your protein needs.

That's the spirit behind everything on this site: red meat isn't the enemy, over-reliance on it is. Shifting the balance of your plate (more often, not always) is where the impact lives.