Tofu truths

Last week’s Lancet report and its ‘planetary health diet’ of next to no red meat will have bolstered the egos of vegans who claim that they are doing the Earth a favour. But just how environmentally friendly are many of the alternatives favoured by vegans?

Fancy a bowl of quinoa, a grain stacked with amino acids, magnesium, phosphorous and iron, which in 2013 enjoyed the endorsement of the UN as a ‘superfood’? Not so fast. Quinoa is traditionally grown in the Andes, spanning parts of Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, where thin soils are replenished with llama dung. Or at least they were. In the first decade of this century, quinoa production increased forty-fold as western consumers took it up with relish. The result is that land occupied by the llamas has been taken up by quinoa production; there is less dung to go around and soils have been reported to be suffering degradation.