OPINION: Let’s keep eating meat

Consumption should be complex

Based on that title alone, you may have already made certain assumptions about me or this piece. But, wait, don’t leave. My intention here isn’t to rage bait radical vegans into flooding my comments with hate, nor am I aiming to appease carnivore-diet influencers whose gastrointestinal tracts, I’m sure, are screaming for an ounce of fiber. Give me a chance and, even if you are a part of those two groups, you might find something I have to say at least moderately interesting.

So, let’s keep eating meat. Why? Because it’s sustainable. But wait — you’re probably thinking — isn’t meat production like… completely at odds with sustainable goals? In its current state, yes — contributing to between 12 and 18 percent of global emissions, according to a 2020 review of studies from Food Research International. Okay, enough with the Q & A; contrary to the surface level impression of that data, the answer to “how can we be more sustainable?” does not require cutting out meat production and consumption entirely. This is good news if you’re someone who likes eating meat, like me.

Thankfully, I have at least two descriptors other than “meat-eater” that I can associate with: I’m Gen Z and a college student. Marketing research suggests that a primary characteristic of Gen Z consumer behavior is that we’re “informed consumers,” meaning we often research and weigh our options before making a purchase. Also, college students are famously economical. We’re learning how to take care of ourselves for the first time and that involves making cost-effective and sustainable choices about the food we buy.

This combination of identities makes our group both price conscious and susceptible to inflationary shocks. Unfortunately for us, food price increases have been one of the defining stories of the post-pandemic inflation crisis. My analysis of the price of a selected group of vegetables and meat products from February 2020 to September 2024 found that the price of meat rose at an average rate double that of vegetables.

Of course, price changes are out of our control. And that fact seems to apply even more to climate change, the specter of which has hung over our lives for as long as we can remember. It’s easy to become nihilistic at the continuously unheeded warnings by the scientific community, the ever-warming summers, and the first snowfall getting later and later each year. But, we can take back control – our actions can have a positive impact.

In fact, to limit the effects of climate change, we must only reduce our meat consumption on an individual level and a simple reduction may benefit the climate more than totally eliminating it.

The evidence for this comes from two studies from Joop de Boer, Annick de Witt and Harry Aiking, a trio of Dutch researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Delft University of Technology who examined the motivations and effects of eating meat on the climate. In the first study, they note that a global transition to diets with less meat would reduce the mitigation costs of climate change by up to 50 percent over the next 25 years. Well, case closed…right? Sort of.

While the benefits of eating less meat on the environment don’t get any clearer than that, why aren’t more people doing it? A 2020 Gallup poll reported that only 23 percent of Americans said they “occasionally” eat meat, against 67 percent who said they “frequently” eat it. I argue that this discrepancy is due to the conversation around meat consumption being a primarily ethical one, rather than one focused on the climate.

Now, hold on, I’m not saying that ethical examinations of meat consumption or perspectives of animal rights activists should be discounted. They often do important work in stopping animal abuse and harmful farming practices. What I am saying is that the more pragmatic approach to increased animal welfare and less meat consumption is through focusing on the climate.

In their second study, the researchers evaluated the motivations of vegetarians and low, middle, and high-meat eaters in their decision for, or against, eating meat. The most important feature of this study, and one I appreciate, is that groups are based on levels of consumption instead of treating non-meat eaters as a monolith, with flexibility even given to vegetarians. They found that in deciding to not eat meat, even among low and middle-meat eaters, animal rights were of negligible importance when compared to other factors such as cost and the environment. For vegetarians, it was a — if not the most — significant reason for not eating meat.

For high-meat eaters, they noted that “they rejected many of the potential reasons against frequent meat eating.” The two most widely accepted, though, were: cost and environment. This indicates that the majority of meat-eaters already have some vague sense that eating less meat is better for the environment.

I’d like to emphasize, once again, if we’re serious about creating sustainable meat-eating practices and combating climate change, we should move away from the tactics of shame and guilt used by animal rights organizations and empower the individual consumer to make responsible decisions. This isn’t just my opinion on its lack of efficacy. A 2023 Gallup poll found that the percentage of Americans who identify as vegetarian or vegan shrank since tracking first began in 1999 and 2012, respectively. I wonder how many non-meat eaters would relate to my boyfriend, Jr, who became a vegetarian after being exposed to PETA-distributed videos of graphic animal abuse as a child. Emphasizing the environment is, for adults at least, the most effective way of reducing meat consumption.

To return to the first study, in their sampling of Dutch and American meat-eaters, the researchers gave each group a series of environmentally conscious practices and asked them to rate each from one (not willing to implement) to five (definitely willing to implement). After this, they asked the participants to rate their willingness again if they were told the practice was highly effective. The Dutch participants adjusted their willingness to eat less meat from 3.58 to 4.26. The switch was even more dramatic in the American sample with a change from 3.01 to 3.88. Furthermore, only 12 percent of Dutch and 6 percent of American participants initially judged the eating less meat option as the outstandingly effective environmental practice that it is.

These findings suggest that it’s not that people aren’t aware of the environmental benefits of eating less meat, but that they simply aren’t aware of its high efficacy and, more importantly, that their individual eating practices can positively impact the fight against climate change.

I imagine some people, even after reading through this, may still believe that consuming meat in any form lies contrary to sustainable practices and animal rights. Let’s say they’re right, and everyone in the world switches to a plant-based diet. According to this review of the ethics of meat consumption by the National Institutes of Health, the world has too significant a limit on the amount of arable land for crops to accommodate a total shift away from meat and that this shift would deprive some animals of their grazing land. This path doesn’t seem to benefit anyone, not even people who prioritize the health of Earth and its animals.

For us Gen Z and college students, the fact that we can have such a massive positive effect on the environment through a simple lifestyle change should be more widely known. Too often have we viewed climate change with a nihilistic paralysis. It makes us cynical, despondent and unable to believe things will get better. But, with the knowledge that we have power — however small or individual — we can change things. Shifting your meat-eating practices to be more sustainable is not only essential, it’s doable. Look up a website focused on plant-based recipes (my favorite is PlantYou), save your bones and vegetable scraps to make stock (it’s easy, as Anthony Bourdain relates simply and brashly here), or remove meat from one meal a day.

It’s Not Just Us