“We hope this report broadens the conversations around higher protein foods and moves the discussions away from an overemphasis on protein.
Yet the debate around livestock, particularly meat, lacks nuance and ignores context and important differences in production systems and differences in world regions, it says.
Globally, annual meat consumption has increased over the past two decades, fuelled in part by population growth and rising prosperity.
If 54 rich countries switch to more plant-based diets, the world would see a carbon “double dividend” by reducing emissions by 61% annually and free up an area the size of the European Union to capture carbon, according to a January 2022 paper in Nature Food by an international team of researchers.
“They tend to reinforce a center of the plate diet, which emphasizes either meat or meat substitute, and therefore steers people away from more diverse and less processed diets.