The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet

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Harmless hippies versus murdering meat-eaters – that’s the clichéd narrative dichotomy. Yesterday’s lentil-eating free-lovers, though, have been consumed by the big business of veganism. However, some people agreed with the diet author. @DaniJ94 wrote: "Finally someone on This Morning who speaks sense, I like her." @KatieMagnet added: "What a brilliant interview #ThisMorning Plant based con." These agencies are nothing more than political or self aggrandising, and the media rarely reports accurately.

ITV This Morning: Author Jayne Buxton under fire for claiming

This is why people have latched onto the plant-based idea with such vigour,” says Buxton. “It’s a supposedly pain-free way of helping the environment. It’s a kind of virtue signalling ­get-out clause that stops people from having to think about making more significant changes to their lifestyles.” I don't need to be convinced about LCHF (I not longer carry around 40kg of fat or have T2 diabetes, because of this,) a diet I've followed for over a decade, or about the lunacy of 'healthy' veganism. No doubt about it, veganism is NOT the answer, it has too many deficiencies in nutrients which are just not bio-available... and it points out what / when / why / which scientific research is accurate and which is not, and which is deliberately misleading or being used for political / commercial gains.

Part four argues for pasture-fed ruminant farming over industrial systems, why there should be a return to unprocessed real food, and is essentially a welcome appeal for a return to nutritional common sense. Ridiculous links between vegetarian and vegan diets and religion, for example because some religions didn't eat meat she links meat free diets with religious ideas about the sin of masturbation. The arguments are so ridiculous and seem as unfounded as saying a murderer had a beard so all bearded men are murderers. The claims in a BBC Horizon programme that aired in early 2021 were (according to the online material provided by the scientist who sourced the data for the programme) based on yet another emissions-per-kilo-of-beef number – 25kg of CO2e. In recent years, we’ve been told by Netflix documentaries, vegan activists and companies selling plant-based products that going vegan is the single best thing you can do to improve your own health, the planet’s and the wellbeing of the animals we share it with.

4 new books we recommend this week: A biased defense of meat

She would rather that we come to terms with our biology, rather than trying to evolve beyond it by creating lab-grown meats. “You can eat grazing animals that have led a really good life and have been good for the soil.” The case for UK-produced meat Buying less, flying less and doing less could make a more meaningful impact. “Just generally consume less. That’s not a good message in a capitalist economy, though. People don’t like it. They like this one because it drives the ­economy forward.” Praise for The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet This isn’t a call to forks for you to head to your nearest all-you-can-eat­ ­steakhouse. Buxton would like to see everyone reduce consumption of meat from industrial farming and ­transition towards more sustainably raised meat, “which will likely mean consuming less”.

Speaking to presenters Holly and Phil, she said: “They’re being marketed as quality healthy alternatives when they’re not.” She added how some companies have come under fire for claiming it is a better diet for the environment, which is not always the case. Plant-based is best for health, go vegan to help save the planet, eat less meat... Almost every day we are bombarded with the seemingly incontrovertible message that we must reduce our consumption of meat and dairy - or eliminate them from our diets altogether. A total of 2.6 per cent is not nothing, but it is not even close to the kinds of numbers that are regularly bandied about. Environmental economist Dr Bjorn Lomborg concurs with Hall and White, asserting that “eating carrots instead of steak means you effectively cut your emissions by about two per cent”. Lomborg, a vegetarian for ethical reasons, says: “There are many good reasons to eat less meat. Sadly, making a huge difference to the climate isn’t one of them.” A diet expert has come under fire from viewers of ITV's The Morning for claiming vegan diets are 'a con' on the show.

The Great Plant-Based Con by Jayne Buxton | Waterstones

Many studies have demonstrated how meat and dairy contributes to carbon emissions – accounting for 14.5 per cent of all man-made emissions, according to the UN – but some believe cutting animal foods out and replacing them with plant-based alternatives does not have the effect some would have us believe.

Animal welfare is the issue that turns many off meat: full disclosure, it’s why I haven’t eaten it for six years. Buxton sympathises: “I understand that people are disgusted by the way we farm meat intensively. I am too.” A 2017 study by Mary Beth Hall, an animal scientist at the US Dairy Forage Research Center, in Wisconsin, and Robin R White, a professor of animal and poultry science at Virginia Tech, concluded that the impact of eliminating all meat consumption would be very small. Modelling a US food system without animals, they found that total US emissions would be reduced by just 2.6 per cent, and this at some considerable cost to nutritional adequacy. For a very long time the impact has been exaggerated,” says Jayne Buxton, the author of The Great Plant Based Con, “and the nutritional costs of the diet understated or even ignored. As a result we have this overwhelmingly dominant narrative that’s taken hold that most people think the best way to improve the planet and personal health is to go vegan.” An ordinary, average British 4oz steak, Buxton worked out from numbers in an FAO report, is about 1.9kg of CO2e. “Estimates of the carbon cost of red meat vary widely. This is not an exact science at all.

The Great Plant-Based Con: Why Eating a Plants-Only Die… The Great Plant-Based Con: Why Eating a Plants-Only Die…

Very little meat consumed in the UK comes from systems that deplete rainforests and generate large amounts of emissions. Imported meat from Brazil, for example, make up just one per cent of UK beef imports. If the high-level, global numbers for emissions are misleading, so are the various claims about the carbon cost per kilo of beef.When it comes to the health and nutrition aspect, the plant-based milk industry has a lot of work to do.