Some time ago, a group of scientists, dieticians and other concerned individuals got together to ask themselves if there was a diet that was optimum for health and for the environment. Their concern was mostly around the state of the nitrogen cycle in Europe as well as health issues from over-consumption of animal products.
The idea of a declaration of what was needed for a healthy diet and environment was developed on 29 October 2009 at Barsac, France at a workshop of experts convened by the EU NinE and BEGIN programmes. The works has come to be known as the Barsac declaration.
Read the full text of the Barsac Programme here.
Pulling all the data together they discovered that a high level of animal food (meat, dairy, etc) in the diet not only is connected to higher instances of poor health, but proportionately contributes a great share to climate gasses and eutrophication.
It doesn’t mean that meat eating should be banned. On the contrary, modern farming, especially organic farming needs animals as an essential part of the methodology. It’s just that we need to eat less meat.
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- The demitarian diet advocated by UN scientists
- Executive summary of research results
- Scientific presentation (powerpoint) COST 869 WG 4 Waidhofen 2008 Oral