As family and friends get together to share holiday foods, it is increasingly obvious that many are making food choices based on environmental sustainability concerns.
Sadly, some common sustainability beliefs are biased or blatantly false. This has resulted in some individuals changing their diets in ways that have little impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but may hurt their personal short-term or long-term health.
Question: What beliefs regarding agriculture’s impact on greenhouse gases and can decrease a person’s ability to obtain all essential nutrients?
Answer: Ruminants, mammals that chew cud such as cattle, have been made the villains of climate change.
This misinformed generalization makes it more difficult for some individuals to get adequate quantities of dietary protein, iron, and zinc.
Q: What misinformation led to the confusion about the impact of consuming beef on the environment?
A: In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s climate report used different standards to evaluate greenhouse gases from various industries.
For cattle, all emissions from converting forest lands to pastures, feed production, fertilizer production and lifetime belching and manure emissions were totaled and then compared to greenhouse gases produced from direct vehicle use (as opposed to all aspects of making vehicles).
Cows would represented only 5 percent of greenhouse gases compared to transportation at 14 percent.
The 2016 Environmental Protection Agency report for U.S. greenhouse gas emissions indicates electricity production and transportation each contributed about 28.5 percent of gasses followed by industrial emissions at 22 percent, commercial and residential at 11 percent and agriculture at 9 percent. Animal agriculture represents only 3.9 percent of gasses in the U.S. and therefore is not the top environmental villain.
Q: Why do these percentages matter?
A: If someone stops consuming beef or other animal protein because they believe this practice is a major cause of climate change, they are not accomplishing that goal of reducing environmental impact to the extent they believe.
The human diet needs to provide adequate amounts of about 40 essential nutrients nearly daily. If just one of these nutrients is too low in the diet on an ongoing basis, the body will eventually run low enough that serious health problems will develop. Removing red meat from the diet removes the most bioavailable form of iron — called heme iron. For females of reproductive age, eliminating red meat then requires consuming more calories from foods lower in iron.
Q: Some people indicate iron and especially heme iron is associated with health issues. Is it?
A: With the exception of individuals with a genetic tendency to absorb too much iron, the data on heme iron causing health issues is as biased as the 2006 climate data. Most foods contain naturally occurring toxins of one sort or another. Remember too much of any food including beef can cause health issues.
