Vegetarian diet ‘feeds more people’

IF THE world went vegetarian it might be able to feed twice as many people, according to a new study.

Having a vegetarian with dairy diet in the US would feed 800 million people – two-and-a-half times its current population. But even having some meat in the diet fed more people per hectare than a pure vegan diet.

The study is the first to compare different diets and how much land was needed to feed the nation.

The current American “Western Diet”: high in meats, grains, fats and sugar found roughly four fifths of available cropland grew crops for animal feed, such as hay.

The other fifth was devoted to fruits, vegetables and grains for human consumption.

A lacto-vegetarian diet had the highest carrying capacity, meaning that it could feed the most people from the area of land available. The study was published in the journal Elementa.