Pros and Cons of Not Eating Meat

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Pros and Cons of Not Eating Meat: A Closer Look At Plant-Based Eating

Meat has been a dietary staple for thousands of years, and lately more people are walking away from it. Some go full vegan, some just quietly stop buying the stuff. Either way, the decision deserves better than slogans, so here’s the honest accounting: what’s genuinely good about ditching meat, and what actually costs you.

The Pros

It’s the biggest lever you have on your food footprint. Meat production is resource-intensive: land, water, feed, and a serious share of agricultural greenhouse gases. A 2021 University of Leeds study analyzing over 3,000 foods found that non-vegetarian diets produced 59% more greenhouse gas emissions than vegetarian ones, with meat alone accounting for about a third of diet-related emissions. (Rippin et al., PLOS ONE 2021) No other single dietary change moves the needle that far.

The health case is real, if unglamorous. Plant-based diets tend to be higher in fiber, vitamins, and minerals and lower in saturated fat. The American Dietetic Association’s position paper concluded that well-planned vegetarian diets are associated with lower risks of obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. (Craig & Mangels, 2009) Note the operative phrase: well-planned. That caveat is doing load-bearing work, and we’ll come back to it. For the full picture on going all the way, see our pros and cons of a vegan diet.

Your grocery bill will notice. Plant proteins are dramatically cheaper than meat. A pound of dried beans runs about a dollar; a pound of ground beef runs several times that. The savings compound fast if you’re feeding a family or eating a lot of protein. Our vegan bodybuilding diet guide shows how lifters eat big on small budgets.

The Cons

Some nutrients need a plan, not just hope. Protein and iron get the most attention, and both are entirely gettable from plants (legumes, soy, nuts, leafy greens), but they don’t happen by accident the way they do on a meat-heavy diet. B12 is the big one: there’s no reliable plant source, so you supplement or eat fortified foods. None of this is hard. It just requires about twenty minutes of reading, which most people skip. Don’t skip it.

Your palate and routines need time. If you’ve eaten meat at most meals for decades, the first month is a learning curve: new flavors, new cooking methods, new grocery routes through the store. Eating out takes more negotiation, though this has gotten dramatically easier in recent years. Plant-based options like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods exist for the transition, but treat them as training wheels, not the destination. The goal is learning to cook actual food, and our 5 low-key fantastic sources of plant protein is a good place to start building the repertoire.

Meal planning becomes a skill, not an option. Meat is the default center of the Western plate; remove it and you have to think about what replaces it. That means more deliberate grocery lists and more batch cooking, at least at first. The upside nobody mentions: people who plan their plant-based meals tend to eat better overall, because the planning forces the question “what’s actually in this meal?” that meat made unnecessary.

The Bottom Line

Not eating meat is better for the planet, generally better for your health markers, and cheaper, in exchange for some upfront learning and ongoing planning. That’s the trade. It’s not a sacrifice and it’s not a miracle. It’s a skill you build once and then mostly stop thinking about.