Are we seeing a shift to climate-conscious diets?

Last week we had an office day and our team were discussing some of the changes we'd each made when it came to diet choices.

One week later and we've seen some interesting findings published - the UK's meat consumption dropped considerably in recent years with 2022 seeing the sharpest drop in meat sales to 1970s levels!

It made me wonder what was behind this... 🤔

Are people waking up to how dietary changes benefit the planet?

Could it be down to increased health & wellbeing awareness?

Or is it simply that the cost-of-living crisis is tightening the purse strings for most families?

Naysayers will likely deny the first two explanations (and probably label me “woke”) but in truth, it's probably a mix of all these things.

The climate benefits of switching to plant-based diets is well documented – reducing emissions, water pollution, and deforestation etc. I firmly believe that many people care about this and do factor it into their lifestyle choices.

Don't worry, I'm not on a virtue signalling campaign here! 

I still enjoy eating meat and don't see me cutting it out completely any time soon. However, these past few years I've switched to a "flexitarian" diet. Admittedly, this was due to living with a veggie girlfriend at first, but I've stuck with it as I've found genuine health benefits and I've become more and more climate conscious. 

I think this is the same for many (it certainly is for my family, friends, and colleagues) and can help, in part, explain the findings here.

The science is there to be seen. We’ll undoubtedly need to make significant changes to our everyday living in the fight against climate change, so the more people can introduce better habits now, the more sustainable these will be over time. Surely this is better than trying to force people to change overnight, through unrealistic measures like meat taxes?

What about you? Have you made changes to your lifestyle?