It has become clear that non-meat diets are beneficial for health and the environment. As a vegetarian since 2013, I try to be as honest with the pros and cons as possible, avoiding confirmation bias. Friends, acquaintances and family have been vegetarians and vegans for decades already, and unfortunately, the urgence and evidence are only prominently publicly visible for the last five years or so. One of the other solutions for meat consumption is lab-grown meat – also known as in vitro or cultured meat. This is very much in favour of meat consumer's culinary wishes, the reduction of animal suffering, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the future, when technologies have improved.
A plant-based diet, or at least a non-meat diet, seems to correlate with health and climate (sustainability, biodiversity etc.) and the EU, US and WHO agenda in a sincere and thus ethical way. Nevertheless, information about long-term effects on health remains incomplete, as the WHO puts it.
Below you will find a rather long list of references to support this all. The counterevidence (discussion) in favour of meat consumption remains sincerely quite unconvincing. It seems that the most convincing information that emphasises the benefits of non-meat diets is published by a fairly large number of major scientific journals, universities and news platforms (e.g. Nature, United Nations, IPCC, University of Oxford, NEJM, Reuters, ETH Zürich) within the timespan of decades. Some references in this 'further reading' section may appear multiple times, but the goal is to show that different renowned media are talking about the same thing with importance. The necessity of showing the large body of consensus and evidence regarding climate change, sustainability, and animal welfare emerges from the observation of growing distrust in the scientific and governmental consensus and policies. In addition, the fact that several economies in the world are rapidly growing – simultaneously, ethical concerns about those economies are increasing – raises the importance for emphasisation. Global policy makers must realise that there are many problems to tackle in order for life on this planet to continue in a pleasant way. And there are economic benefits from it as well, which may be extra interesting.
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