Super summary: the vegetarian diet is the most efficient

Summary: The American farmland could feed about 402 million people who follow a diet in the media, as he could get to double that figure reaching 807-million people-if people follow a vegetarian diet that includes dairy products only. Instead, in the case of a large-scale conversion to a vegan diet, available land could feed about 735 million people.

The reason for this is related to the fact that not all agricultural lands are suitable for any purpose. On certain grazing areas that are used to grow livestock like cows, cultivation would simply not feasible, which means that those areas would be wasted space, for a purely vegan world. Similarly, the diet followed on average by Americans at the time adibisce about 80 percent-acre of arable land that could be used to grow food for people-to produce cattle feed.

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It is increasing in Italy the number of vegans and vegetarians: according to the 2016 Italian Eurispes Report, published in January, in 2015 eight percent of the Italian population has declared a vegetarian (7.1 percent) or vegan (1 percent): an increase of over one percentage point compared to 2015.
Among them, 12 percent claim to be vegetarian or vegan to protect and respect the environment.
One of the main reasons that lead people to choose healthy veg fact, in addition to health benefits and protection of animals, it is the environmental one.
From the PETA Vegan Society, countless associations and various studies promoting a vegetarian or vegan diet to help preserve the ecosystem.
The land consumption, the production of CO2, the use of water resources and deforestation are just some of the effects on the planet's mass consumption of animal products.
In 2010 a study by the UN Environment Program stated that "a substantial reduction of the effects would only be possible with a substantial change in the global diet, away from animal products."
In particular, according to the study, animal products in the form of derivatives such as meat or milk or eggs require more resources and cause higher emissions than plant.
More meat consumption increases in rich countries, poor countries suffer the most severe environmental impact.
In many quarters, then, the hope for a reduction in the consumption of meat and animal products and greater use of agricultural crop products.
But, as all or most of the things of this world, the question is not simply black or white, and can not be resolved with an ultimatum: the problems of climate change and the planet's environmental crisis are not solved all becoming vegans .
As shown by several studies, in fact, a vegan diet adopted globally does not automatically mean benefits for the planet and is not necessarily sustainable ecological and environmental level.
In a study published last July on Elementa magazine, a team scientists from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University analyzed ten different diets - from input current average American, in an omnivorous diet to a purely vegan - and established which of these would feed more people with the exploitation of US farmland.
And, perhaps surprisingly, the most sustainable diet from a production point of view is not found to be the vegan, but a vegetarian diet that includes dairy foods consumption.
The power supply resulted in higher environmental impact is instead that currently reference to the United States, with a higher consumption of meat, cereals, fats and sweeteners - which allocates 80 percent of the arable land to animal food production (such as hay), while the remaining 20 percent is used to produce fruit, vegetables and cereals to be human.
According to various estimates about how much land is suitable to be grown, however, diets that provide a moderate consumption of meat can feed more people of vegan diets.
According to this study, therefore, a reduction in meat consumption is necessary to make more productive agricultural land, but the total elimination of animal products is not the most sustainable solution.
This is because not all agricultural land are equal, and not all are cultivated: there are grazing land, unsuitable for cultivation but can be used for breeding; the perennial agricultural land, which are cultivated plantations that resist all year and that yield several crops, such as cereals intended for animal feed; and the cultivated farmland, where fruit and vegetables.
While the meat-rich diets provide a massive use of all three types of soil, pure vegan diet does not see in any way used the land for perennial crops, thus not exploiting an important resource to produce more food.
A study in some ways similar to the one published last July came out in November 2015 in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions.
The research analyzes the impact of different types of diet on energy use, the consumption of fresh water and greenhouse gas emissions.
The three types of power analyzed include a diet that provides for the reduction of calories without changing the type of foods consumed by the American average today; one that does not reduce the calories it consumes foods recommended by the Department of Agriculture of the United States; and a diet that does both, by reducing calories and changing the foods you eat.
"With regard to the emission of greenhouse gases to eat the lettuce it is three times worse than eating the bacon."
The recommendations of the Department of Agriculture for a healthy diet consisting of a higher consumption of fruits, vegetables, dairy products and seafood - all foods that require intensive use of resources to be produced in relation to the calories they provide.
For this, while the decrease in calorie intake reduced by about nine per cent energy consumption and fresh water and the emission of greenhouse gases, the consumption of more "healthy" foods increases all three effects: the use of energy grows by 38 per cent, the fresh water consumption by 10 per cent and the emission of greenhouse gases by 6 per cent.
With the same calories, therefore, to produce food for a diet rich in vegetables will cause more damage to the environment than to produce certain types of meat.
"Many common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you might think.
Eggplant, celery and cucumbers do not come off well compared to pork and chicken, "said Paul Fischbeck, one of the scientists who worked on the study.
On a like calories consumed, "with regard to the emission of greenhouse gases to eat the lettuce is three times worse than eating the bacon."
For example, to produce foods such as cherries, mango and mushrooms it is consumed more fresh water to breed any animal species, but against the corn, carrots and wheat need less water than the meat production.
Shortly after its publication, the study was presented in the papers as a denial of the fact that a vegetarian diet was beneficial for the environment - then statement refuted by the same authors.
The research, in fact, did not analyze the effects of a vegetarian or vegan diet, but the environmental impact of the production of individual vegetables, calorie for calorie.
"You can not group together all the vegetables and say that is good, and you can not put together all the meat and say that hurt," said Fischbeck to 'Huffington Post.
The bottom line, then, is that considering a vegan or vegetarian diet as a panacea to all the ills of the world is an exaggeration.
As appears misplaced those who deny that a lower global meat consumption may help reduce the exploitation of natural resources.
It will not be the vegan diet to save the planet from environmental crisis, but this does not clean up our consciousness by pounds of hamburgers we had in some fast food.

From Vice