Going vegan makes a difference. Research shows how individual choices reduce animal harm globally. We’ve gathered a few reliable studies to demonstrate this impact.
Our World in Data
This 2024 article be Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser has a couple of charts that show just how wasteful animal agriculture is. Hopefully, you can see that a plant-based vegan diet is significantly more energy-efficient than a meat-based one. Around 80% of global agricultural land is used for livestock farming—including grazing and growing animal feed. This wasteful use of land could be used more efficiently to grow crops for people, or rewilded to support biodiversity.
“Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength.” A&Q 41
If you look at the disparity between land used and calories produced, it becomes clear that the wastefulness of animal agriculture has a massive impact. However, this macro level problem is made up of individual dishes affecting individual animal lives affected by individual choices.
Nature Food – Oxford Study
This 2003 study published in the scientific journal Nature Food analyses the relative impact different lifestyles have on the environment. It clearly shows that a vegan lifestyle has a substantially lower negative impact on the environment across every metric. It also shows that adopting a vegan diet is the single most impactful personal action we can take to reduce our environmental footprint. Caring for our Earth through a plant-based vegan diet conserves resources, and enables us to live in balance so that future generations may also thrive.
