Drastically reduce meat consumption, to the point of eliminating it completely? It would be the best choice we could make, both for us and for the environment. On the occasion of the Meat Out Day, the world without meat that is celebrated like every year the March 20we shake some interesting data.
According to the Crea Food and Nutrition Research Center (Council for Research in Agriculture and the Analysis of the Agricultural Economy) daily, on average, are consumed 143 grams of meat among teenagers and 124 grams among adults, while The consumption of legumes in the population is only 9 g per day.
Numbers that we should turn over, since all the benefits of plant nutrition, from health to the environment to animals themselves remain undisputed. In Italy, more than one in two person has reduced the consumption of meat and the younger generations are particularly aware of the negative impacts of this type of diet.
Yet the advantages of the consumption of beans, chickpeas, lentils are manifold, as explained by the Veronesi Foundation, as they represent a source of protein, iron, zinc, vitamins of group B and fiber, and are associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, and some forms of tumors.
As for the environmental impact, the role played by intensive farms on the production of greenhouse gases and pollutants is enormous, as scientists, activists and associations have been reported for years. To make only one example, the European zootechnical sector emits the equivalent of 502 million tons of CO2 per year, but if we also consider indirect emissions, such as those related to the production of feed and deforestation, you reach 704 million tons of CO2, more than all those produced by all vehicles circulating in the EU.
View this post on Instagram
On a global scale, according to IPCC Uplant nutrition would reduce greenhouse gas emissions of almost 8 billion tons per year, equivalent to those of India and the United States.
In addition to requesting less energy, water resources, soil consumption and being convenient from the point of view of health, plant nutrition also has the enormous advantage of avoiding the suffering and death of many animals: Only in Italy there are over 650 million animals slaughtered between cows, calves, pigs, chickens, hens, rabbits (BDN 2025 data). And from this calculation the fish are excluded, counted in tons due to the very high number of slaughtered specimens.
According to Animal Charity Evaluators, at least 105 animals are spared for every person who chooses plant nutrition. Of these, 79 are wild fish, 14 fish from farms, 11.5 are poultry (chickens, turkeys, hens) and finally 0.5 mammals, including pigs, cattle and sheep. Numbers that remain a underestimation because they do not include invertebrates such as shrimp, octopus, cuttlefish, clams, mussels and other molluscs.
To remind us why it is necessary to drastically remove and reduce animal proteins from your dish, here is the touching video of being animals:
