The Green Fork is the official blog of the Eat Well Guide. Click here to Find Good Food.

This Healthy Monday tip was written by Pooja Mottl.

Today’s Healthy Monday tip: Eat Less Meat!

Surprise! Eating a bit less meat can lengthen our individual lives as well as the lifespan of our planet. This is the message coming from two recent Nobel Prize winners and a slew of grassroots and non-profit organizations. In an op-ed released in the New York Times last April, internationally renowned economist and 2008 Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, highlighted the devastating effects of meat consumption when referring to the “march of the meat-eating Chinese”, and just 2 months ago, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, called for “one meat-free day a week” in an effort to tackle climate change.

Organizations around the world have also chimed in, such as the UK’s Compassion in World Farming which has called for governments to help promulgate a goal to reduce meat consumption by 60% by the year 2020. Here at home the Center for Food Safety and The Cornerstone Campaign along with the assistance of Take a Bite blog, launched the Cool Foods Campaign in April to address the issues of global warming through food choices.

Experts have long noted that people in industrialized countries exceed their daily-required amount of protein routinely (and usually without notice) as our food supply and food choices direct animal-based protein to our forks. Simultaneously, researchers are waving the warning flags that Americans do not get enough nutrient-rich plant-based foods in our diets. This limits our ability to obtain crucial vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants. Even the USDA underwent an extreme makeover of its dietary pyramid to help us learn how to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains each day.

What can you do? Start by getting more of your daily calories from foods lower on the food chain such as legumes, veggies, fruits and nuts. These calories will help us live longer, healthier lives. Meats (if not very lean in their cut) and dairy contain saturated fat and cholesterol — two demons of healthy living as they can lead to a slew of chronic diseases, particularly heart disease. Try to cut down your weekly consumption of meat to avoid these health risks.

The second blow in the one-two punch eating less meat delivers relates to global warming. The rearing of cattle and other animals for food has an increasingly disastrous impact due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and habitat destruction. The links in the chain are long and eye opening. Not only are GHG’s generated by roaming ruminants, but the production of animal feed, the oil-based synthetic fertilizers that help grow the mostly conventionally-grown feed, the transportation of the product, and the highly energy-intensive farming and clearing of ecosystems that is required to sustain these habits all sum up to an exorbitant degree of harm to our planet. Eat less meat and you can help yourself as well as the planet!

Below are some eye-opening statistics:

• 700 calories of animal feed is required to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef
• Synthetic fertilizers emit 647 million pounds of nitrous oxide per year, a powerful GHG.
• Although Americans make up 5% of the world’s people, we consume 15% of the world’s meat.
• From field to fork, animal production accounts for almost 20% of all GHG emissions globally — more than from transportation.

For more information on how meat and animal production affect our health and planet, see “Global Warming & Your Food“, a publication of the Cool Foods Campaign as well as Mark Bittman’s piece from the New York Times, “Putting Meat Back in Its Place“.