September 27, 2022 — Humans have consumed meat all throughout history, but more recently, meat consumption has exploded. Global meat production reached about 375 million tons in 2018, more than triple the amount that the world produced fifty years ago.
Given its impact on climate change, many argue that it’s time to reduce red meat consumption and explore viable alternatives. For some meat lovers, seafood may be the ideal swap.
Seafood is a relatively low climate impact source of highly nutritious food. The authors of a new Nature study analyzed the GHG emissions associated with the production of various seafood like whitefish and crustaceans as well as their respective nutrient densities. They found that reducing the consumption of red meat and replacing it with certain seafood species may improve nutrition and reduce GHG emissions at the same time.
Seafood contains nutrients that other foods don’t have, or only in very low levels, such as iodine, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids, says Friederike Ziegler, study author and senior scientist at the RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. In terms of nutrition and greenhouse gas emissions, those that performed best or had the lowest emissions per nutrient density were small pelagic species (like anchovies, mackerels, and herrings), bivalves like mussels and oysters, and salmonids, she adds.