Future diet: Insects and lab-grown meat could cut food emissions by 80 per cent

Switching to “novel foods”, like algae and lab-grown milk, could bring huge environmental benefits compared with the typical European diet

By Michael Le Page

Swapping the conventional meat and dairy products that make up a typical European diet for insect meal and laboratory-grown produce could cut food-related greenhouse gases, as well as water and land use, by more than 80 per cent, a study suggests.

Food production has huge environmental impacts, resulting in more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. The clearance of land for farms is also a key driver of biodiversity loss, while some lakes, rivers and groundwater supplies are emptied via irrigation.

To …