I like food. I mean well beyond eating to survive: I do enjoy flavours. Thai is my favourite cuisine but I have a rule: I will try any food that I’m offered at least once. Sometimes the surprise is positive, sometimes it’s horrible; but that’s my rule.
I don’t know how I ended up in this Our World in Data page, but it is a good comparison. There will be quite a bit of variability depending on the specifics of the production system (beef in country X vs country Y, grass fed vs grain fed, etc), but I am interested in the rough scale. And the difference is huge.
Of course greenhouse gasses are only one of the environmental considerations when comparing different types of food. Water use, fertiliser use, soil conservation, pollution runoffs, etc come to mind. This is even before considering animal welfare; I like animals walking around and I pay more for that type of product.
I like the taste of beef but I have to say that I am eating it much less frequently than I used to five years ago. I am not asking you to be vegetarian or vegan—I am neither. In fact I am not asking you to do anything, but I just keep on looking at the graph thinking what I can do better while still enjoying food as much as I do.
