来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2022年4月30日
Swapping the meat and dairy products that make up a typical European diet for insect meal and laboratory-grown produce could cut food-related greenhouse gases, as well as water and land use, by over 80 per cent, a study suggests. Food production has huge environmental impacts, driving more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Land clearance for farms is also a key cause of biodiversity loss.
一项研究表明，将构成典型欧洲饮食的肉类和乳制品替换为昆虫餐和实验室生产的农产品，可以将与食品相关的温室气体以及水和土地使用减少80%以上。食品生产对环境造成巨大影响，导致超过三分之一的温室气体排放。农场的土地清理也是生物多样性丧失的一个关键原因。
To assess ways to lessen this impact, Rachel Mazac at the University of Helsinki in Finland and her colleagues have studied the potential effects of switching to “novel and future foods”.
为了评估减少这种影响的方法，芬兰赫尔辛基大学的雷切尔·马扎克和她的同事研究了转向“新颖的和未来的食物”的潜在影响。
“What we are looking at are foods that are novel in their production technology, like cultured meat or cultured milk,” says Mazac. She is part of a group at the University of Helsinki that has been doing life-cycle assessments of the environmental impacts of such foods.
马扎克说：“我们关注的是生产技术新颖的食品，比如人工肉或人工奶。”她是赫尔辛基大学一个研究小组的成员，该小组一直在对这类食物的生命周期对环境的影响进行评估。
Her team used the analyses to calculate the potential benefits of switching to these foods, assuming people are willing to do so, compared with foods that are typically consumed in Europe.
她的团队利用这些分析计算了与欧洲通常食用的食物相比，人们愿意转而食用这些食物的潜在好处。
The results suggest that an “optimised diet” of novel foods could cut greenhouse emissions by 83 per cent, water use by 84 per cent and land use by 87 per cent. “We are seeing some pretty significant reductions in impacts,” says Mazac. The team also found that swapping to a vegan diet would cut greenhouse emissions by 84 per cent, water use by 82 per cent and land use by 80 per cent.
研究结果表明，新型食物的“优化饮食”可以减少83%的温室气体排放，84%的水使用和87%的土地使用。马扎克说：“我们看到了一些影响的显著降低。”研究小组还发现，转变为纯素饮食将减少84%的温室气体排放，82%的水和80%的土地使用。
Opting for lab-grown meat, rather than a vegan diet, could allow many people to eat foods that more closely resemble their current diet. “It would be a way for someone to consume their fast-food burger, but save on land use and water use and global warming potential,” says Mazac.
选择实验室培育的肉类，而不是纯素饮食，可以让许多人吃到更接近他们当前饮食的食物。马扎克说：“这对人们来说将成为一种吃快餐汉堡的方式，但可以节约土地使用和水的使用，并减少全球变暖的可能性。”
Some of these products are already widely available, such as Quorn, grown from fungal cells. Others, such as lab-grown meat, are only produced on a small scale. The team’s analysis also included some foods not widely eaten in Europe, such as insects and kelp.
其中一些产品已经被广泛使用，比如Quorn，它是从真菌细胞中培养出来的。其他的，比如实验室培育的肉类，只是小规模生产。研究小组的分析还包括一些欧洲人不常吃的食物，如昆虫和海带。
Speaking of the results, Tim Lang at City, University of London, says: “It’s almost too good to be true.” If the findings are correct, the research has immense policy implications, he says. But Lang thinks the environmental benefits won’t come about through consumers making voluntary changes to their diet. They will only play out if governments and companies essentially force these foods on people, he says.
谈到研究结果，伦敦大学城市学院的蒂姆•朗表示：“这简直好得令人难以置信。”他说，如果这些发现是正确的，这项研究将具有巨大的政策影响。但朗认为，环保效益不会通过消费者自愿改变饮食来实现。他说，只有当政府和公司基本上强迫人们食用这些食物时，它们才会发挥作用。
Not everyone is convinced by how the research was carried out. “The study makes a huge number of very optimistic assumptions,” says Erik Millstone at the University of Sussex, UK. Even if the analyses of the “future foods” currently produced in small quantities are correct, the analyses might not apply to mass-produced versions, he says.
并不是每个人都相信这项研究的结果。“这项研究做出了大量非常乐观的假设，”英国苏塞克斯大学的埃里克·米尔斯通说。他说，即使对目前小批量生产的“未来食品”的分析是正确的，但这种分析可能不适用于大批量生产的食品。