Live longer by swapping red meat for plant proteins
Also: How fracking causes quakes
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This week:
- Live longer by swapping red meat for plant proteins
- The Big Picture: How fracking causes quakes
- Singapore's green buildings bring nature back to the city
Live longer by swapping red meat for plant proteins
It's the last week of Veganuary, a U.K.-based challenge to eat vegan for the month of January.
Most of us know that eating less meat and more plants is good for your health and can cut food-related emissions, which make up about a third of the greenhouse gases causing climate change.
For many of us, going fully vegan would be a huge change.
But research shows that even relatively small substitutions of red meat with plant-based proteins such as tofu, beans and lentils can add months or even a full year to our expected lifespans and make a noticeable dent in our carbon footprint.
Just 7.1 per cent of Canadians were vegetarian and 2.3 per cent were vegan in 2018.
On average, Canadians get 65 per cent of their protein from animal sources, says Olivia Auclair, a research fellow at the University of Oxford, who did research on Canadians' eating habits during her recent PhD studies at McGill University in Montreal.
Only five per cent of Canadians' protein comes from plant-based sources.
Eating habits — along with shopping and cooking habits — are hard to change. So Auclair thought about how people could get more in line with the Canada Food Guide released in 2019, which recommends lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, along with protein from both animal and plant sources.
"We have to make these … recommendations at least feasible for people to implement in their everyday lives," Auclair said.
She and her colleagues looked at what 13,600 Canadians ate, based on Statistics Canada data from "food diaries" recorded by those people in 2015. She then modelled what would happen if those people substituted 25 to 50 per cent of the red and processed meat they were already consuming with plant-based proteins, but didn't change their poultry, fish or seafood intake, since beef has the highest environmental impact.
The study, published last year in Nature Food, found that replacing half their red and processed meat would increase people's life expectancy an average of nine months, while cutting their diet-related carbon footprint by 25 per cent.
"We really saw co-benefits of our replacements across all three dimensions: nutrition, health and environment," Auclair said.
The health benefits were almost double for men compared to women — men stood to gain a full year of increased life expectancy, on average. That's largely because men eat more red and processed meats. The climate benefits were also higher for men cutting back on meat.
While Auclair's study relied on modelling, real-life examples show similar impacts.
In 2019, an international group of scientists recommended a planetary health diet — a plant-based diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and whole grains, with small amounts of meat, dairy and fish, similar to what is recommended by the Canada Food Guide. It predicted that switching to this diet would prevent 11 million deaths per year and help keep greenhouse gas emissions from food in line with climate targets. (Although the world would also need to reduce food waste and improve food production.)
A study last year of 200,000 U.S. health-care workers found that eating a diet similar to the planetary health diet reduced a person's risk of dying by 30 per cent, from causes ranging from heart disease to cancer to respiratory diseases, compared to those with more meat-based diets.
A 2021 Swedish study similarly found a 25 per cent drop in mortality for those adhering to the planetary health diet.
— Emily Chung
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Reader feedback
In response to our article about the climate impact of food waste apps, Neil Bird of Großsteinbach, Austria, wrote:
"In Austria, food waste is not allowed to be landfilled. It is composted or incinerated for energy. If you reduce this waste, then you actually cause some emissions because one produces less compost, so need more fertilizer [and burn more] fossil fuels. Most of the emissions in the food chain come from agricultural production. These emissions are saved ONLY IF the farmers produce less as a result of a reduction in food waste … Yes, reducing food waste is a good thing and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the benefits are smaller than one thinks, and one should not detract the consumer from the much bigger benefits from reducing consumption of red meat (especially beef) and milk products."
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The Big Picture: How fracking causes quakes
In fracking, operators drill vertically and horizontally for several kilometres. Water, sand and chemicals are then injected at high pressure to fracture the rock and release stored oil or gas. If the pressurized mixture taps a vulnerable part, or a fault, the rock can slide and start an earthquake.
Earthquakes are also being caused by pumping wastewater from the water-intensive fracking process into underground cavities. The size, pressure and depth at which the water is stored, when not properly managed, can all lead to seismic activity. Engineers are working to better predict and prevent these effects, but many critics are concerned about the potential damage to homes and infrastructure.
Western Canada's gas-rich Montney Formation is a fracking hot spot, with the new Coastal GasLink pipeline about to offer Canadian producers access to overseas markets. Already, between 2021 and 2024, seismologists have watched the number of magnitude 3 and higher earthquakes go from 80 per year to 160. Magnitude 3 quakes are the threshold at which people can feel shaking and damage to infrastructure can begin to occur, according to Canadian seismologist Gail Atkinson.
CBC went to northeastern B.C., where residents told international climate correspondent Susan Ormiston about their concerns, and also visited the Permian Basin in Texas, where one county was hit with more than 60 earthquakes in a week.
— Jill English
Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web
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The warming climate is making it easier for wildfires to grow and spread. Police and environmentalists in Italy suspect the Mafia may now be weaponizing these wildfires.
- After President Donald Trump said he would pull the U.S. and its crucial funding out of the Paris climate agreement, U.S. billionaire Michael Bloomberg has stepped in to help the UN and U.S. stay on track.
- Amid Trump's tariff threats against Canada, some argue the situation shows oil isn't a geopolitical strength and that this could push Canada to end its reliance on oil.
- Australia is experimenting with a strategy of offering subsidies to electrify stoves and hot water and home heating one postal code at a time.
Singapore's innovative green buildings are bringing nature back to the city
Singapore native Doris Yip sits at a table in one of the city's busy food courts. The loud chatter and constant movement makes for an environment that never slows down.
"To stay in the city — very, very stressful," she said.
An estimated six million people live in this metropolis on the tip of the Malay Peninsula. And with a population density almost twice that of Toronto, city living here comes at a cost.
"I was born in 1959," Yip said. "In Singapore that year, there's no tall buildings." But in the '70s, urban growth took off. That, coupled with large-scale deforestation over decades, significantly reduced the local animal and plant life.
Surrounded by concrete and steel, the population has been grappling with common ailments — anxiety, obesity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other health issues. But there are growing efforts to incorporate green space.
In 2009, the Singapore government introduced a mandate for all new buildings to replace the greenery lost on the ground due to development. Visionary architects have been working to incorporate vegetation into the urban landscape — not outward, but upward, by adding greenery to highrise terraces and gardens, for example. The goal is to develop a lush urban forest, stretching across the city and offering spaces of relief for inhabitants, lowering air temperature and improving air quality.
"Nature is our life-support system," said Richard Hassell, a Singapore-based architect whose firm tries to design with climate change, population growth and rapid urbanization in mind. "We think it's a human right to be within touching distance of nature."
Thanks to the government's policy, boxy grey buildings are adorned with green drapery and crawling vines stretch across windows. A painted turtle splashes through a shallow pool as Hassell emerges on a rooftop, surrounded by lush foliage and squawking birds.
This doesn't just benefit the locals. Tourists come from around the world to see the transformative architecture, including the giant vertical gardens of the Supertree Grove and the seven-storey waterfall at Jewel Changi Airport.
The city-state is also investing in therapeutic tourism and creating naturalized spaces that support people with dementia and neurodiverse children, including those with autism.
Watch the video for the full story.
— Elizabeth Benner
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Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty
