A newly released study is making headlines and causing some glib cheer in the deniersphere, as it purports that eating lettuce produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than bacon. Climate Depot posted the press release in full, and Bastach at the Daily Caller did his usual churnalism, rewriting the press release into a post.
According to the study, a diet that reduces caloric intake reduces emissions. However, it also claims, that switching to USDA recommended food patterns, whether reducing caloric intake or not, increases emissions.
The UK’s Independent actually sought out an independent expert for their coverage of this study, a researcher who has studied the link between meat consumption and emissions in the past. He found (like all of the other studies) that reducing meat intake does in fact reduces emissions and explains how this study reached its counterintuitive conclusion. This new study looks at caloric intake, instead of protein, the latter being the more common - and accurate - metric for comparison.
This difference is huge, as it is the intensely high caloric content of meat like bacon that drives its emissions intensity. One ounce of bacon (about three strips) has 153 calories, whereas one ounce of lettuce (two big leaves) has 4 calories. As per the study, replacing the caloric count of bacon with lettuce means you’d need to eat nearly forty times more lettuce than you would bacon. Since it's obvious that even the most militant vegetarian isn't eating two and a half heads of lettuce for every strip of bacon a normal person eats, this comparison seems a bit half-baked.
So as much as we’d love to endorse a diet of bacon, after chewing it over it seems the study's focus on calories instead of protein makes these findings hard to swallow.
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