Vegan Calculator: What's your environmental impact of living vegan? (2024)

FAQs

What are the environmental impacts of going vegan? ›

Vegans produce only 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions and use 25% of the land and 46% of the water of high meat-eaters (Scarborough et al., Nature Food, 2023, Rabes et al., Sustainable Production and Consumption, 2020; Kim et al., Global Environmental Change, 2020; Jennings et al., Nutrients, 2023).

New for World Vegan Month, the Veganalyser is a fun new app designed to see how many animals you can save from being born into a life of pain and suffering. Sure it's not 100% accurate - nothing is! - but we hope that you find it as fun and thought provoking as we do.

6 Science-Based Health Benefits of Eating Vegan. A vegan diet may have several benefits, such as helping you lose excess weight, lowering the risk of diabetes, improving kidney function, and lowering blood sugar levels, among others. Vegan diets offer a range of health benefits.

Alternative proteins cause significantly less air and water pollution. By using plants, fermentation, or cell cultivation instead of livestock, the production of alternative proteins does not emit the same toxic air pollutants—including ammonia, particulate matter, and hydrogen sulfide—as conventional meat production.

Emissions. Food production is responsible for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from cows burping methane. Methane is such a potent greenhouse gas that a global switch to plant-based diets would cut emissions from food production by 28 per cent – that's the equivalent of India going carbon neutral.

As you read along, you'll find out that most health conditions developed by vegans are related to vitamin B12 deficiency. Without the familiar sources of vitamin B12, certain bodily functions can be disrupted, leading to anemia, gastritis, stroke, Crohn's disease, and Celiac disease.

Most participants had an omnivorous diet, but there were clear gender differences in the number of vegans and vegetarians compared to omnivores, with women being more likely to be vegan and vegetarian than men (see Figure 1). Omnivore men also ate more meat than omnivore women at different meals (see Table 2).

And that's only the dietary component of veganism. “The thing is, despite strict vegans' understandable frustration with meat eaters, no one is completely vegan. It's just not possible to live in this world and entirely avoid causing animals to suffer.”

Going vegan is one of the best things you can do to help stop animal cruelty. By refusing to pay for animal products, you reduce the demand for them, which ensures fewer animals are bred to suffer and die on farms and in slaughterhouses.

While there is some scientific research to suggest that going vegan and eating less animal protein can help to prevent diseases, the evidence is still lacking in terms of cold, hard numbers on longevity in particular. However, this doesn't mean that a vegan diet won't help you live longer.

Is vegan healthier than meat? ›

There is relatively little direct evidence on the long-term health of vegans, but studies so far suggest that, compared with otherwise similar people who are meat-eaters, they have a lower risk of some digestive tract disorders such as diverticular disease and a somewhat higher risk of bone fractures, perhaps due to ...

The Mediterranean diet has been ranked the healthiest way to eat by US News & World Report. The eating plan is flexible, full of whole foods and plants, and is linked to longevity benefits. Experts say the best diets are easy to follow, not restrictive, and focus on unprocessed foods.

Today, the UN says meat and dairy (farmed livestock) accounts for 11.2% of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. But, if we all went vegan, scientists believe the world's food-related emissions might drop by 68% within 15 years, limiting global warming.

People who follow a plant-based diet account for 75 percent less in greenhouse gas emissions than those who eat more than 3.5 ounces of meat a day, and a vegan diet also results in significantly less harm to land, water and biodiversity, according to new research from the University of Oxford.

The results showed that, in comparison to diets containing greater than 100g animal flesh per day, vegan diets (i.e. plant diets containing no animal products) cut methane emissions by 93.5% (confidence intervals 90.3% – 96.3%, Supplementary table 8).

1 vegan day per week (52 days a year) can save nearly 50kgs of CO2 per year. 1 vegan week per month (12 weeks a year) can save nearly 80kgs of CO2 per year.

When land is used to raise animals instead of crops, precious water and soil are lost, trees are cut down to make land for grazing or factory-farm sheds, and untreated animal waste pollutes rivers and streams.

Although this is a hypothetical discussion, it would provide the cut in emissions needed to limit global warming to 2º, but such a crop-based approach to agriculture may compromise water and land resources, as well as impact biodiversity.