Q. What is the connection between plant-based diets and the environment?

A.  Research over the past few years has shown quite consistently that plant-based diets are better for the environment. In today's world of modern animal agriculture, you must grow food and feed it to animals, who will eventually become food themselves. It's much more efficient to skip the meat and eat the plants directly. A lot of resources are required to bring meat to market. Animal agriculture takes a great deal of land, food (which requires resources to grow), fossil fuels, and water. And the animals produce manure and methane along the way. It's no wonder that animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of total green house gas emissions. It's estimated that by 2050, if we continue to eat the typical Western diet -- high in meat and highly processed foods, our greenhouse gas emissions related to food might increase by 80%.

So, what can you do? It's easy! You can switch to a plant-based diet. The more plant-based you go, the more benefits for the planet. Loma Linda University researchers found that semi-vegetarians had a 20% lower carbon footprint than non-vegetarians; pescatarians had 24% lower; lacto-ovo vegetarians had 28% lower; and vegans had 42% lower. Even the Mediterranean diet -- essentially a plant-based diet -- is linked with a better environmental footprint in terms of land use, energy use, and water use than a typical Western diet.

With so much concern today over water, land use, climate change, and how we will feed a growing population in the future, it seems clear that we should all eat more plants and less meat. Even the UN called for cutting meat intake by half in order to protect the planet. If you really care about the environment, one of the most powerful things you can do during your lifetime is switch to a plant-based diet.