The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses
Abstract
With a third of all food production lost via leaky supply chains or spoilage, food loss is a key contributor to global food insecurity. Demand for resource-intensive animal-based food further limits food availability. In this paper, we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- April 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1713820115
- Bibcode:
- 2018PNAS..115.3804S