Veganism: Weight Loss, Animal Rights & Health Benefits - Research Paper

Introduction

In recent times, people have increasingly embraced veganism as their main diet. Essentially, when one becomes a vegan, they choose to exclude animal-derived products, such as milk, eggs and meat, from their diet. From a personal standpoint, these people choose veganism mainly either facilitate their weight loss process, to safeguard animal rights, or to protect their bodies from contracting lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and heart complications. Additionally, the aspect of environmental conservation also serves as a reason for embracing veganism due to the belief that it is an environmentally-friendly practice. However, whether this belief can be substantiated or not is subject to research findings, which brings to the research question; is veganism beneficial to the environment? This paper attempts to respond to this question by exploring how the vegan diet helps in mitigating climate change, alleviating the loss of agricultural land and minimizing the wastage of water. The knowledge gained from this assessment will enhance people's awareness of not only the nutritional impacts of their diet choices but also the environmental effects. Therefore, they will make more informed choices when selecting the right diet to benefit their bodies and the environment.

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Can the Vegan Diet Help Climate Change?

The issue of global climate change has been subject to intense debate in media, social media, and the political sphere. Nonetheless, these debates are less intense with regards to how people's diets affect climate change. For this reason, several studies have been conducted in recent years to evaluate how various diets such as the omnivorous, vegetarian, and vegan impact the global climatic conditions. Harrabin interviewed environmental and UN experts and, based on their responses, concluded that feeding on a plant-based diet can assist significantly in combating climate change (par 1). One such response that informed this conclusion was by Professor Pete Smith, an environmental expert, who when asked about meat diet said that "We are not telling people to stop eating meat......But it is obvious that in the West we are eating far too much.....We are also wasting too much food." (Harrabin par 6).

The above response seems to suggest that meat production adversely affects the environment, which is probably the reason why some jurisdictions are currently proposing the imposition of higher taxes for meat products to reduce its consumption rate. The Vegan Society surveyed the number of vegans living in the United Kingdom in 2016. The survey findings revealed a 350% increase in the number of vegans within the last decade to over 500000 people (Cooper 16). The Vegan Society attributed this drastic increase to the enhanced awareness among residents aged between 15 and 3 years on the deleterious effects of dairy and meat products on their environment.

Cooper mentioned a 2006 report by the UN, which revealed a connection between the livestock industry and global climate change (18). The findings in this report depicted that animal agriculture generated 18% more carbon dioxide than the transport sector. Practices such as compaction and overgrazing result in massive land degradation. These deleterious effects render livestock farming and the consumption of animal-based foods unsustainable.

For the above reason, it would be justified to state that veganism, which involves the consumption of animal-free alternatives, reduces significantly the climate change effects caused by diets from animal products. This statement informs the position taken by the Vegan Society that veganism entails and way of life that respects sentient beings and their natural environment (Cooper 19). Other than greenhouse gases, fossil fuel usage and freshwater consumption are other aspects that can gauge the impact of veganism on climate change. Cooper stated that livestock farming accounts for 70% of freshwater use (19). Similarly, one milk calorie requires 14 fossil fuel calories to produce, while one beef calorie requires 40 fossil fuel calories. However, the production of one-grain calorie only needs 2.2 fuel calories (Cooper 19).

These results indicate that people's dietary choices determine directly the level of greenhouse gas emissions and the usage of fossil fuels, thus, ultimately impacting climate change. For this reason, Cooper considered plant-based diets as being superior to animal-based diets in conserving the environment (20).

On another note, population trends show that the global populace will increase to 9.8billion by 2050 (Chai et al. 1). This population growth will also likely increase the demand for animal products, which may continue threatening the climate due to greenhouse gas emissions, if not addressed. With this threat in mind, Chai et al. analyzed omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan diets to determine the diet that affected the environment the least. Their analysis involved 18 reviews and 16 studies retrieved from electronic databases such as Scopus and PubMed. The findings from these reviews indicated a clear difference in how the three diets affect the environment. With regards to greenhouse gas emissions, the analysis found vegan as the diet with the lowest emissions (Chai et al. 16).

The omnivorous and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets were found to affect water and land considerably. The consumption of animal-based products from these two diets translated to higher water use. However, a vegan diet, which only contains plant-based foods, reduces the rate of water consumption globally, thereby facilitating the conservation of scarce water resources. The analysis also determined that veganism has the lowest land use based on findings that cattle farming utilizes 30% of arable land and 70% of the agricultural land (Chai et al. 16). On the above account, one can confidently assert that the vegan diet facilitates greatly the mitigation of climate change, thereby enhancing its environmental friendliness.

Can the Vegan Diet Help Our Loss of Agricultural Land?

Feeding the current and future generations sustainably pose a challenge in these modern times. The challenge, specifically, is how to balance the production of vegetables, fruits, proteins and grains in the global agricultural system. Krishna et al. studied the current food production to determine whether it satisfies the universal dietary needs (1). The study first compared the recommended diets by nutritionists against the universal agricultural production data to establish the nutritional balance of global food production. It then used various crop and food databases to evaluate the carbon dioxide emissions and agricultural land use effects of switching to recommended diets.

The findings revealed that if agricultural systems produced foods in the amounts recommended by nutritionists, the size of land devoted to sugar production, fats production and grain production would reduce by 30 million, 105 million and 150 million hectares respectively (Krishna et al. 6). Conversely, the size of land set for livestock farming would rise by 57 million hectares. These findings suggest that switching production to recommended diets would reduce significantly the size of land required for agricultural use. Ultimately, this reduction helps in alleviating the loss of land to non-nutritious food production, thereby facilitating measures to preserve biodiversity. Therefore Krishna et al. concluded that the only way to save the land and consume nutritionally balanced diets is by producing and eating more vegetables, grains and fruits and switching to diets rich in plant proteins (12). This conclusion endorses the vegan diet as a worthy choice in the push for conservation of available land and healthy eating practices.

In support of the above findings, an article posted on The Economist maintained that growing vegetarian and vegan food requires less land compared to livestock farming ("Why People in Rich Countries are Eating more Vegan Food" par 19). Cattle do not convert all the food they eat into calories. From the perspective of crop production, even though the unused energy from the foods is good for cattle, it is deemed to be a waste. This view is because more land will be needed per food calorie for cattle farming that grain and vegetable farming. For instance, livestock farming may require a large size of land for grazing animals that would not essentially be needed if grain production was practiced.

This difference in the amount of agricultural land is also confirmed by Shepon et al. in their study of the opportunity cost of animal-based foods (3804). This study revealed that plant-based diets produced twice more nutritious food per cropland compared to animal-based diets such as milk and beef (Shepon et al. 3808). This ability of plant-based diets to provide more nutritional value for the same unit of land than animal-based foods further advances the claim that veganism can assist in mitigating losses in agricultural land.

How Much Water Are We Wasting With a Non-vegan Diet?

The production of non-vegan diets requires more water than vegan diets. Choudhary and Nagendra studied the effect of non-vegan diets on the environment and found these diets to be unsustainable (255). For instance, the production of one pound of meat requires 2400 gallons of water, while only 25 gallons are needed to produce a similar amount of wheat. Additionally, meat-based food requires about 4000 gallons of water daily, whereas a vegan diet only requires 300 gallons. When animal proteins and grain proteins were compared, it was discovered that animal proteins require 100 times more water than grain proteins per unit kilogram produced (Choudhary & Nagendra 255).

The above results reveal a considerable increase in water requirement for non-vegan diets, relative to vegan diets, making them environmentally unsustainable. As such, when considered with regards to nutritional value, non-vegan diets waste more water than vegan diets. As the global population grows, the demand for food, both plant-based and animal-based, also grows, which threatens to deplete the scarce water resources if not controlled. Going by the current food consumption patterns, the future population by 2050 will require double the amount of the current food production (Jalava et al. 1).

For that reason, Jalava et al. evaluated the effect of diet change on water use by comparing animal-based and plant-based foods (1). This study found that the current global water consumption would be enough to gain global energy intake and a recommended diet. The consumption of vegan foods results in less wastage of water resources. The study findings support this claim since they revealed that a reduction in the consumption of animal-based proteins and foods reduced global freshwater use by about 21% and naturally infiltrated rainwater by 14% (Jalava et al. 6). This considerable reduction in water use was attributed to the decrease in fat and protein content when the consumption shifts from a more animal-based to a more plant-based diet. As such, more water savings will only be realized by encouraging people to eat more fruits, vegetables, grains and carbohydrates and fewer animal proteins.

Conclusion

This paper has explored whether the vegan diet helps in mitigating climate change, alleviating the loss of agricultural land and minimizing the wastage of water to establish its impact on the environment. With regards to climate change, the studies assessed reveal that vegan diets lower the level of greenhouse gas emissions and the usage of fossil fuels more significantly compared to animal-based diets. Therefore, the paper infers that veganism helps in curbing the adversities of climate change. For agricultural land, the studies indicated that switching production to vegan diets reduce...