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Plant Based Diet Connected to Lower COVID-19 Rates

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

Covid-19 Transmission graphic

It’s been years that we’ve been living with COVID-19 and it looks like we missed the window to fully eradicate it, which means we need to adapt our lifestyles to ensure that rates of transmission are as low as possible. Of course, the obvious things involve collective action like improving indoor air quality and filtration. As an individual you should consider switching to a plant based diet.

Plant-based and vegetarian groups had a higher intake of vegetables, legumes and nuts, and lower intake of dairy and meat. After adjusting for important confounders, such as body mass index, physical activity and pre-existing medical conditions, the plant-based diet and vegetarian group had 39% (OR=0.61, 95%?CI 0.44 to 0.85; p=0.003) and 39% (OR 0.61, 95%?CI 0.42 to 0.88; p=0.009) lower odds of the incidence of COVID-19 infection, respectively, compared with the omnivorous group. No association was observed between self-reported diets and COVID-19 severity or duration.

Conclusion Plant-based and mainly vegetarian diets were associated with a lower incidence of COVID-19 infection. These dietary patterns may be considered protective against COVID-19 infection. (Study protocol registered in CAAE: 54351421.4.0000.0068.)

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Fake Meat is so Much Better

- Adam Clare

The new alternatives to meat like the Beyond Burger are remarkably better for the environment than processed animals. This is found by a research team at the University of Michigan who looked into the carbon footprint of different processed hamburger patties (veggie and meat). They found that one Beyond Burger patty has a carbon footprint of 400g, whereas the same sized beef patty has a footprint of 3,700g. Reducing your carbon footprint by making tiny changes to your diet is getting easier every year.

Production of the dominant ingredients – pea protein, canola oil, coconut oil – represent important contributions to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), energy use and land use. Packaging also is an important contributor across all impact categories: the polypropylene tray is the largest contributor to packaging’s share of GHGE, energy use, and water use, whereas fiber production for cardboard and pallets make notable contributions to land use. We estimate that switching to a polypropylene tray made of 100% postconsumer recycled content could reduce the overall GHGE of the BB life cycle by 2% and reduce energy use by 10%.

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Reducing Meat Consumption can Reduce the Risk of the Next Pandemic

- Adam Clare

Zoonotic diseases are nothing new and are often the cause of large outbreaks which cause great harm to humans and other animals. It’s speculated that the recent COVID-19 coronavirus popped into existence due to close animal – human contact in Chinese wet markets. History as shown us that wherever there is frequent, close contact between animals and humans there is an increase in the likelihood of new diseases. This has led to scientists calling for reduced meat conniption with the thinking that if eat less meat than the potential for human-animal transmission is reduced in markets and processing facilities.

This shouldn’t be that big of a challenge since people are already reducing their meat consumption and in Canada 10% of the population is vegetarian or vegan.

It is clear that the origins of these pandemics are not restricted to certain countries or certain practices, such as “wet-markets.” For some researchers, including Swedish chief physician and infectious diseases professor Björn Olsen, stemming rising demand for meat and dairy is a necessary part of reducing our risk for pandemics.

Olsen, who is well known for being an early critic of his government’s COVID-19 response, is now becoming known for another early warning — one he has been making in books and articles for nearly 10 years now. In a recent interview in Swedish, Olsen notes that pandemic viruses have all arisen where animals and humans meet, and raising billions of animals as food will have effects.

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Learning About Moral Philosophy Reduces Meat Consumption

- Adam Clare

cat

A taste of a postsecondary level moral philosophy class can turn you off of tasting meat. It’s been debated for thousands of years if learning moral philosophy actually changes how people live. Does knowing about the complexities of ethics actually make you more ethical? Short answer: yes. In a recent study a team of researchers and philosophers tested out if moral education about meat consumption would change their diet.

And it worked! Not only were students in the meat ethics sections likelier to say they thought eating factory-farmed meat is unethical, analysis of their dining cards — basically debit cards issued as part of UC Riverside’s meal plan that students can use to buy meals on campus — suggested that they bought less meat too. Fifty-two percent of dining card purchases for both the control and treatment groups were of meat products before the class. After the class, the treatment group’s percentage fell to 45 percent.

This effect wasn’t driven by a few students becoming vegetarians, but by all students buying slightly less meat. It’s possible this effect was temporary; the authors only had a few weeks of data. But it at least lasted for several weeks.

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Heavy Meat Eaters Eat Veggies When Given the Choice

- Adam Clare

fruit store

The meat industry is one of the leading drivers of the recent spat of fires in Brazil, and globally the meat industry is a major factor in the climate crisis. If we’re going to avert catastrophe we’re going to need people to change their diets in one simple way: cutting out meat. If people don’t want to cut out meat entirely, that’s ok, as long as they reduce their meat consumption. As a society we can reduce everyone’s meat consumption very easily by just providing meatless meals in cafeterias.

Emma Garnett and her colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, collected data on more than 94,000 meals sold in 3 of the cafeterias at the university in 2017. When the proportion of meatless options doubled from one to two of four choices, overall sales remained about constant. But sales of meat-containing meals dropped, and sales of vegetarian meals, such as “wild mushroom, roasted butternut squash and sun blushed tomato risotto with parmesan”, rose 40–80%.

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