It turns out that meat does have a place in a healthy diet – but there is a catch
Our relationship with meat is complicated, but reducing our intake could make all the difference, says
Meat is not bad for you. In fact, eating the flesh of another animal is a highly efficient way of getting some of the nutrients we humans need for good health. People in very poor countries who cannot afford to eat meat may become so malnourished that they suffer from stunting, wasting and anaemia.
These are the true and incontrovertible claims made by the journal Animal Frontiers,a joint venture between scientists and livestock producers, which this week published a series of articles in defence of meat. The journal also got around 1,000 scientists from around the world to sign something called “the Dublin Declaration”: a longwinded pledge to apply “the highest standards” to the science of animal-based nutrition, and to resist “reductionism or zealotry”.
What this really is – you may have sensed it by now – is a whistle from the trenches of the everexpanding culture wars. The subject of meat has, in recent years, become fiercely polarised. The meat industry – a $1.1trillion global concern, but one that contains many small, hard-pressed farmers – feels itself to be under attack. Battle lines have been drawn, and the enemy painted in clichés. You’re either against meat, in which case you’re an anti-capitalist eco-zealot whose clothes appear to be knitted from porridge oats; or you’re for it, in which case you’re a livestock farmer, or an angry man in red trousers (or both).
Needless to say, this is not how real humans think or behave. Roughly 6 per cent of people in this country are committed vegetarians or vegans. The rest of us are in a muddle. Should we be eating meat, and if so what kind? Will it give us cancer, or block our arteries? Is it true that cow farts cause climate change? (Answer: no. Burps are the problem.) And how is it possible to love animals, while simultaneously devouring them?
One of the recurring themes of my new book, Ravenous, is that we should all eat less meat. But perhaps not for the reasons you’d imagine. Co-written with my husband, Henry Dimbleby – until recently the Government’s “food tsar”, and the author of the independent National Food Strategy – the book is a guided tour of the modern food system, explaining why we eat the way we do, and what this is doing both to our health and to the planet.
The rights and wrongs of eating meat are explored in some depth, precisely because they are complicated. We British are famed as a nation of animal lovers. Yet we are also proud carnivores – once nicknamed “les rosbifs” by the French – and we produce some of the best meat and dairy in the world. We eat, on average, 220g of meat a day: almost double the global average.
But our eating habits are changing. Over the past decade, our meat consumption has declined by about 17 per cent. The UK now buys a third of all the plant-based meat or dairy alternatives in Europe. This is probably not, for the most part, because of health or environmental concerns, but because the British eat more ultra-processed food than any other European nation. (It makes up 57 per cent of our national diet, compared with 13 per cent in Italy.) Meat is a relatively expensive ingredient, so many food manufacturers prefer to keep it to a minimum. There are bigger profits to be made from refined carbohydrates, sugars and vegetable oils.
A cheap, ultra-processed pizza – with or without pepperoni – is much less nutritious than an old-fashioned, home-cooked plate of meat and two veg. However, it’s worth remembering what that nostalgic plate really looked like. Our grandparents ate far less meat overall than we do, because they were more skilled and judicious cooks. They knew how to extract a week’s worth of meals from a single chicken or a joint of beef, eking it out into pies, stews and stocks. This frugality was good for them, and for the planet.
The scientific consensus is that, eaten like this, in modest quantities and alongside plenty of vegetables, fresh meat is an excellent food. It provides iron, magnesium, zinc and B12, as well as protein. Red meat is best limited to 70g a day (about one-third of a normal-sized steak), and processed meat – especially anything containing nitrates, such as bacon, salami or sausages – should be eaten sparingly, as there is now strong evidence that it increases the risk of cancer.
Scientists also agree that it is perfectly possible to get all the nutrients you need from a vegan diet. Novak Djokovic isn’t exactly wasting away. But it does take extra care and planning. It also requires us to resist some powerful evolutionary urges. The mere smell of roasting meat – “as voluptuous as incense in a church”, as Claudia Roden put it – can send us into a trance of longing.
What about the ethics of meat-eating? There are currently around 80 billion animals on this planet being reared for food: 10 times the human population. Most will have miserable lives and die while barely out of adolescence. Some are gassed to death, some electrocuted, some crushed or suffocated in fishing nets, and others “humanely” stunned before having their throats slit. I won’t go into the gruesome detail – you’ll have to read the book – but it is liable to put you off your dinner.
Probably the happiest of the animals that we rear to eat are the sheep and cows who are allowed to graze outdoors. But as a side effect of digesting grass, ruminant animals produce a lot of methane. The burping and manure of ruminants accounts for two-thirds of the UK’s agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. As well as producing harmful gases, grazing animals stop trees and shrubs from growing – thus inhibiting nature’s most effective method of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. The pasture on which they graze – those seemingly idyllic green hills – is usually treated with artificial fertiliser to make it lush, so that it fattens the animals faster. And their diets are nearly always supplemented (in some cases replaced entirely) by crops such as soy. These are often imported from countries where ancient rainforests are being felled to make way for crop farming, with disastrous consequences for both wildlife and climate.
The global food system is the second-biggest cause of climate change (after the fossil fuel industry), and the number one cause of deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and biodiversity collapse. It is impossible to tackle any of these harms without addressing the problem of meat. Livestock farming simply takes up too much space and too many resources.
Growing plants for human consumption produces around 12 times more calories per hectare than rearing meat. Yet an incredible 85 per cent of the farmland that feeds the UK is used for rearing livestock – either as pasture or to grow crops for animal feed. This is a wildly inefficient way to eat.
If everyone in the UK reduced their intake of meat and dairy by just one-third, that would free up around 20 per cent of our farmland to be put to better uses. It would enable us to restore some of our ancient woodlands, marshes and peat bogs, which, on top of sequestering carbon, would provide habitats for some of our most endangered wildlife.
It would also create more space for the kind of gentle, naturefriendly farming that some of our native species, such as skylarks or brown hares, actually prefer. Livestock is integral to this style of farming, with animals grazing on fallow land as part of a crop rotation system. But it does require more land to produce less meat. It could never satisfy our current appetites, or capture significant quantities of carbon.
Trying to identify the most “ethical” kind of meat can be dizzyingly complicated. Freerange meat is better for the animals, but not necessarily for the environment. An intensivelyfarmed chicken – reared in a giant, strip-lit, heated barn, never feeling sun or rain on its feathers – actually has a lower carbon footprint than its happier outdoor cousin. This is because indoor birds gain weight more quickly, catch fewer viruses, get sick less often, and fewer die before they are ready to be slaughtered. This higher survival rate means you get more output (a portion of chicken) for less input (bags of chicken feed). The only simple way out of this ethical conundrum is not to eat either bird.
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone must go vegan. (I still eat some meat myself.) Moderation in all things, including moderation. If we all reduce our meat consumption by at least 30 per cent, we can get close to having it all: more space for nature, a cleaner atmosphere, kinder livestock farming and a balanced diet.
It might be a lifestyle change for many, but it can hardly be described as a privation. If you usually eat meat at every meal, try going without on Mondays and Tuesdays. Job done. And no shots fired in the culture wars.
Our grandparents ate far less meat than we do, because they were more judicious cooks