2023-10-23 10:45:49
Food also pollutes. From production to cooking, foods can have “an enormous impact on the environment” and produce “direct effects on health”, warns Sima, the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine, drawing up the ranking of foods and techniques most at risk. Beef and lamb are at the top for the quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere during production and distribution, while the greatest damage in terms of levels of CO2 and fine particles emitted comes from charcoal stoves.
Beef, Sima explains, is the food that “generates the most pollution in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. To produce 1 kg of beef, in fact, 59.6 kg of CO2 are released into the atmosphere through all the various phases that go from production to sale: soil changes, breeding, animal feed, processing, transport, sale, packaging (OBC Transeuropa data). In second place is lamb (24.5 kg of CO2), in third place is cheese ( 21.2 kg of CO2)”. But “they also pollute chocolate (18.7 kg) and coffee (16.4 kg). Similar research conducted by the University of Oxford” in the United Kingdom, “on over 57 thousand foods sold in the main supermarkets using 4 environmental indicators (emissions of greenhouse gases, water use, land use and potential for aquatic eutrophication), gives the highest pollution score to the ‘beef and lamb’ item: 34.72 out of 100. Followed by cured meats and cheeses (9.13) , nuts and dried fruit (7.79)”.
“Products of animal origin are therefore those that cause the highest quantity of CO2 emissions, while products based on cereals, fruit and vegetables are the most eco-sustainable products”, underline the environmental doctors. “In Italy – they specify – it is estimated that 85% of emissions in the food sector concern foods of animal origin”.
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