

After analysing the eating habits of about 2,000 French adults, and the greenhouse gas emissions generated by producing the plants, fish, meat, fowl and other ingredients, researchers concluded in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that such a diet might not be the greenest in environmental impact.

“When you eat healthy, you have to eat a lot of food that has a low content of energy. You have to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables,” said Nicole Darmon, the study's senior author from the National Research Institute of Agronomy in Marseille, France.

Growing fruits and vegetables doesn't produce as much greenhouse gas as raising cattle or livestock, but food production - including the use of farming equipment and transportation - is estimated to be responsible for 15 percent to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in development countries, the authors said.



From the diaries that were kept for seven days between 2006 and 2007, the researchers identified the 400 most commonly consumed foods. They then used a database to find out how much greenhouse gas was emitted to produce each one, measured as the grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per 100 grams of food.


“The only step that wasn't taken into account was the transport from the supermarket to the home,” she added.

Overall, about 1,600 grams of carbon dioxide were emitted for every 100 grams of meat produced. That's more than 15 times the amount of greenhouse gas emitted during the production of fruits, vegetables and starches and about 2.5 times as much greenhouse gas as that from fish, pork, poultry and eggs.


The most greenhouse gas - 857 grams - was still emitted to produce 100 kcal of meat, but only about three times the emissions from a comparable amount of energy from fruit and vegetables.





Roni Neff, the director of research and policy at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for a Livable Future, cautioned against taking the findings too literally. For example, according to the study's calculations, people would need to eat about four kilograms (nine pounds) of fruit and vegetables to make up for a smaller serving of meat.

“I think they're raising a lot of important questions that need further investigation,” she said. - Reuters