Diet is a nuanced issue. It’s built from changing preferences, choices, and availabilities and follows the shifting scenery of our daily lives. It’s never as simple as choosing a diet and sticking to it unwaveringly. Your tastes change, you crave something every once in a while, you’re offered new options, and you cheat (sometimes a lot). A diet is not an exact science. This is why I’ve disliked using the term vegetarian or vegan for a while now. It doesn’t allow for flexibility. From the moment I tell people about my diet, I inevitably feel compelled to stick to it around them at all times. It’s a common issue for others, too. People who try to go vegan often feel pressured to stick rigorously to the diet, no exceptions. And people who would otherwise want to try it out are too intimidated by the strictness of the diet. Society has a way of doing that, finding the cracks in your best intentions.
But it shouldn’t be about that, especially if you are doing it for environmental or health reasons.
Every single meal makes a difference. Whether you have one vegan meal a day or cheat once a month, you’re still making an impact through each meal you choose out of consciousness of the world around you. If you want to go vegan or vegetarian but “just can’t do it because I love bacon too much”, well then go vegetarian and eat bacon! It doesn’t matter! Everything else in that meal besides that bacon also has value and carries weight. You’re still making a difference. If you are trying to do the right thing, no one (including yourself) should shame you for that.
Oxford University and the University of Minnesota have given us a compelling case for this in the form of a thoughtful and in-depth research paper. The study has analysed the health and environmental impact of various food groups and diets. The results from this study leave us to interpret multiple new and important conclusions, but I will be focusing on just the most shocking one today; the fact that it is better for the environment to be two-thirds vegan than to be a vegetarian. It seems hard to believe at first but after some analysis it begins to make sense. A two-thirds vegan means to be vegan for two out of your three meals for the day, traditionally eating vegan for breakfast and lunch and then breaking it for dinner. Looking at the graph blow, you can see that the large differentiator is dairy. As a vegetarian your meals usually consist of high amounts of dairy in each meal. That's how much of an impact dairy makes on the environment (if you want to further explore this fact, I suggest the movie Cowspiracy on Netflix).
The Economist
So, what does this tell us? It shows us how even small decisions can decrease your carbon footprint substantially. Being two-thirds vegan (or basically “cheating” every single day), cuts your emissions by 60%! Being fully vegan reduces it by 85%. The fact that being a part-time vegan is better than being a vegetarian is testament to my point that flexibility in a diet should not just be acceptable but embraced, especially if the aim is to increase the amount of people on that diet. This is also nothing against being vegetarian, which still has a substantial effect for the environment. It is rather a case for empirically pointing out that a flexible diet can still be an effective one and in some cases, more effective than some strict ones. Society should not shame those wanting to just try, and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed to have meat once in a while. Rather, take pride in each meal where you do make an effort. Define your diet as the meeting place for what you want to achieve and what works for you. Do this, and you’ll begin to see that you can make an impact whichever way you choose.
References:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/46/23357.full.pdf
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/11/15/how-much-would-giving-up-meat-help-the-environment