255 grams per week. That’s the short answer to how much meat you can eat without harming the planet. And that only applies to poultry and pork.
Beef cannot be eaten in meaningful quantities without exceeding planetary boundaries, according to an article published by a group of DTU researchers in the journal Nature Food. So says Caroline H. Gebara, postdoc at DTU Sustain and lead author of the study."
Our calculations show that even moderate amounts of red meat in one’s diet are incompatible with what the planet can regenerate of resources based on the environmental factors we looked at in the study. However, there are many other diets—including ones with meat—that are both healthy and sustainable," she says.
Good on you!
When my wife and I started being conscious about our food intake, it wasn’t too bad to give up red meat, and shrink meat portions / add veggies.
It took us months of learning / trying new recipes to actually get to the point where we were consistently eating fewer than 14 meat-centric meals a week (lunch/dinner). Once we got comfortable cooking plant based dishes though, we had built up so much momentum that we went from 1 or 2 plant based meals a week to 100% in just a few weeks.
It takes a long time to build up that comfort level, but at some point a switch just flips and the new “normal” is just as easy as what you were used to.