Study says Asia will need more meat as rice loses nutritional value
11/06/2014
The paper, entitled Increasing CO2 Threatens Human Nutrition, has suggested that people in Asia are likely to eat more beef and other types of meat in the years ahead because lower levels of protein, zinc and iron in rice.
Asia produces and consumes around 90% of the world rice crop, experts have estimated, but the studies carried out for the new paper show that levels of protein, zinc and iron in rice crops are decreasing as levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere go up.
The United Nations said that average levels of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million in April 2014. It projects the level will continue to rise. Lead author of the study, Dr Samuel Myers of the Harvard School of Public Health, recently told the China Daily: “You can be a climate-change denier and not believe in the greenhouse effect, but you still have to be concerned that we know CO2 is rising in the atmosphere. We know CO2 is having a direct effect on the nutritional quality of food.”
Share this story:
