The £2 billion NHS Windfall: Why Meat Reduction Matters
January 2024
“Our report offers an innovative and exciting approach which has the potential to help alleviate some of the most pressing challenges our nation faces. We hope this report will serve as a catalyst for government to explore how meat reduction can empower individuals to take charge of their health, enable the Treasury to save healthcare costs, and the nation to make significant strides toward meeting its climate goals. – Lorraine Platt, Co-Founder, Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation
The story so far
In 2024 Britain faces key challenges in meeting our environmental targets and continually improving the health of the British people. At the same time, spiralling health costs and a tough economic climate mean that the government and the average family must do more with less.
We propose that modest reductions in how much meat British citizens eat can provide strong benefits in all of these areas. This report aims to educate both policymakers and the public alike on the personal and societal benefits to eating even a fraction less meat. In this way we hope individuals can be free to make informed choices about their diets.
We review the latest literature in public health, climate science, economics, and behavioural science and model the potential benefits to Britain of several meat-reduction scenarios. We estimate cost savings to the NHS from reductions in deaths from key lifestyle diseases worsened by high meat diets, such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer.
Major findings
Our major findings include:
- If the British population ate meat-free lunches on weekdays, improved health could save the NHS as much as £2.2B annually.
- Reducing British meat consumption by 10% (e.g. eating 2 fewer packs of sausage per family per month) would offset the emissions of 16% of the cars on UK roads.
- Far from plant-forward diets being out of reach of everyday people, the average British household could replace 20% of their meat consumption while saving over £130 annually.
- Implementing meat-free defaults in public catering – a low cost and unobjectionable intervention – would save the NHS £74M a year.
Summary & Recommendations
As this report has made clear, modest reductions in meat consumption can boost the health of the British people, benefit the environment, ease household budgets, and positively influence the British economy. This is supported by the weight of the science, as well as our own modelling, presented here for the first time.
Health Benefits: The report highlights the substantial health advantages of reducing meat consumption, alleviating the burden on the NHS. Reducing intake of red and processed meats is linked to lower rates of major lifestyle diseases such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and obesity. We estimate that if the UK population swapped our meat for their weekday lunches, cases of over 11,000 cases of Type 2 Diabetes could be prevented a year⁴⁵, and 366k fewer people would be living with cardiovascular disease⁴⁶. The health benefits of this change would have similar health effects to adopting the EAT Lancet diet, which arguably requires far more lifestyle change. These health benefits could save the NHS over £2B annually.
Climate benefits: Meat production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but even modest meat reduction can help the UK meet its climate goals. A 10% reduction in meat consumption, which is two packs of sausage per family per month, could offset the emissions of 15.7% of the cars on UK roads.
Household savings: Healthier, plant-based diets are not only more climate-friendly, but they are affordable too. Far from plant-based diets being more expensive, the average British household could replace 20% of their meat consumption while saving £132 a year.
The power of nudges: We also found that implementing meat-free default menus in public catering could generate significant benefits. Nudges are proven to work, are easy and cheap to implement, and enjoy public support as they preserve individual choice.
In conclusion, we recommend implementing plant-based defaults in public catering and educating the public around the benefits of modest reductions in meat consumption. This strategy is realistic and evidence-based, and addresses multiple national priorities simultaneously. Doing so can generate a triple dividend: benefiting health, wealth and environment.
Recent Findings
April 2024
Since the publication of this insight, Nature.com published similar research on “Sustainability benefits of transitioning from current diets to plant-based alternatives or whole-food diets in Sweden“.
The study investigates the environmental, nutritional, and economic implications of incorporating plant-based alternatives into the Swedish diet compared to animal-source foods or whole-foods. Their results indicated that plant-based alternative rich diets significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and freshwater use, with vegan diets offering the highest reduction potential. Similar environmental benefits were observed when replacing animal-source foods with whole-foods.
The plant-based alternative diet only increased household spending by 3-5%, while whole-foods was 4-17% cheaper. From a nutrition standpoint, plant-based diets met Nordic nutrition recommendations (with the exception of B12 and Vitamin D), but increased levels of iron, magnesium, folate, and fibre in the population.
All of these corroborate with our own findings in this Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation report, with reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and a healthier population. We also found that British households would save financially on a whole-foods diet.
Read the nature.com report here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45328-6
