Scientists reveal how many doner kebabs we must stop eating a week to save the planet_Nhy
Scientists have claimed that Brits will need to curb their kebab consumption if the government is to meet its net zero targets.
The government’s climate advisers have said that the average amount of meat eaten by Brits each week equates to roughly 8 kebabs, but that this needs to be reduced by a quarter to help meet emissions targets.
In the seventh Carbon Budget report, which was undertaken by Labour’s Climate Change Committee, experts were tasked with developing ways in which greenhouse gas emissions could be limited between 2038 and 2042.
One suggested resolution contained within the study was to encourage Brits to consume 25 per cent less meat and reduce dairy consumption by 20 per cent by 2040.
The Committee claimed that this would allow for farmland to be freed up for increased tree planting to absorb carbon at greater rates.
Some of the report’s suggestions sparked backlash online, prompting Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to comment on the issue.
Rowing back on the report’s findings, Sir Keir, who does not eat meat and was previously a vegetarian, said that the battle to tackle climate change ‘does not mean telling people how to run their lives’.
The Prime Minister said the commitment to reaching net zero emissions was ‘important for the next generation’ but caveated this by saying that telling people how to live their lives was ‘not the right way to go about it’.
Brits have been urged by top government scientists to curb their meat consumption to alleviate the impact of carbon emissions
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has commented on the report by saying that telling people how to live their lives is ‘not the right way to go about’ reducing emissions
Having himself now switched to a pescatarian diet, Sir Keir refrained from telling others to follow in his footsteps.
Instead, he told reporters: ‘I’m not in the business of telling people how they should run their lives.
‘I am absolutely clear that we are going to get to clean power and absolutely keep our commitment to net zero because it is so important for the next generation and generations to come.
‘That does not mean telling people how to run their lives. That is not the right way to go about it’.
Included in the Climate Change Committee’s report was the assertion that Brits are already beginning to veer away from meat due to an increase in the availability of alternative protein sources.
However, they cautioned that further reductions in meat consumption would be required to meet net zero aims.
The committee’s Emily Nurse said: ‘If you think about the average amount of meat that a person eats in the UK, if that were all converted to doner kebabs – and I’m not saying that all anyone eats in the UK is doner kebabs, this is just to visualise – then the average amount would be around eight a week.
‘And in our pathway, we’re saying by 2040 that would be six’.
How the Climate Change Committee expects the Net Zero drive to affect households’ costs
A previously touted benefit of reducing meat consumption was that food costs would begin to fall significantly. However, the report’s findings failed to prove this would be the case.
According to the Committee, should UK households change their food intake to the extent required to meet net zero targets, prices would only fall by less than 5 per cent.
Graphs contained within the report suggest the typical annual spend on food and drink is expected to drop by around £100 from £4,100 in 2025 to £4,000 by 2050, based on 2023 prices – the equivalent of £2 a week.
