Kiwi diet isn’t as bad as Monbiot says
UK writer George Monbiot says NZ’s meat-loving diet is devastating for the planet. disagrees.
Overseas experts are not necessarily experts in the New Zealand context. It seems to be taking us a very long time to realise this, even though we acknowledge that New Zealand is unique.
The country’s geological youth and maritime climate, combined with relatively recent settlement and educated population, mean that the development of the country has followed a different pathway to that of most countries.
In the past, experts in farming from the old country brought in what they thought were “good things” — gorse, broom and rabbits, for instance.
And then ferrets, stoats and weasels to control the rabbit problem.
The current misguided behaviour is still about farming.
In the middle of the regenerative agriculture debate (with the focus on trying to decide what it means in New Zealand when we already have soil organic matter, high animal welfare and pastoral-based systems) we have UK-based journalist George Monbiot splashed in the headlines, saying that “the New Zealand diet is particularly bad for the planet due to the vast amount of land required to produce food for it”.
The statement misses the fact that most food we produce (for fewer greenhouse gas emissions than other countries) is exported — about 95 per cent of dairy and almost 90 per cent of beef and 95 per cent of sheep meat.
Also under debate is the term “diet”. Diets are difficult to assess because self-reporting tends to be optimistic and major databases, such as those created by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) use “carcass availability“as a guide, rather than actual consumption (based on self-reporting).
Based on FAO assessments, the average New Zealand diet contains approximately 75kg of meat per capita per year, in comparison with the USA at 100kg, and Israel, Australia and Argentina at between 90 and 88 kg per person a year.
Unlike the other countries, New Zealand’s consumption (on average) is approximately a quarter beef, 5 per cent sheep meat, 25 per cent pork and over half is chicken.
Israel’s beef consumption has increased by 50 per cent since 2015 and was almost 20kg per person in 2021. This is twice that of average New Zealand consumption.
The CSIRO (the Australian equivalent of the New Zealand Crown Research Institutes) has calculated the best diet to meet nutritional needs and minimise environmental impact.
It suggests 0.8 servings of red meat (in which beef, lamb, pork and kangaroo are included) a day, which is 80g of raw red meat and approximately 19kg a year.
The CSIRO recommendation is to increase average meat consumption in total from 2.7 to 2.8 servings a day; the increase is in red meat.
On this basis, New Zealanders are eating more meat than required (but not as much as some other countries).
In terms of dairy, the recommendation by CSIRO is 2.5 servings a day where one serving is 250ml milk, 40g hard cheese or 200ml yoghurt.
This is an increase of one serving a day from the average Aussie diet.
The average Australian consumes less milk than New Zealanders (96 cf 109kg per year) but more cheese (11.83 kg per year in comparison with 7.8kg).
The likelihood is that New Zealand dairy consumption is under what CSIRO recommends.
Further, although the CSIRO talks about “dairy or equivalents”, studies have shown that “alternatives” are not nutritionally equivalent. ■