Abstract
Legume-derived foods have been shown to have comparatively low greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities whilst providing high amounts of nutrients. However, processing legumes into meat analogues can incur significant energy costs. Here, we undertake a comprehensive life cycle assessment of plant-based and (Brazilian and Irish) beef burger patties. Sixteen impact categories are supplemented with the carbon opportunity cost of land occupation, and benchmarked against nutrient density units (NDU) to provide holistic evidence on the potential contribution of plant-based patties to environmentally-sustainable nutritional density. Plant-based patties have a smaller environmental footprint across most categories, including a 77% smaller climate change burden, but incur 8% more energy use compared with Brazilian beef patties. Normalised scores (person equivalents) were significantly larger (p < 0.05) for the beef products across key categories including land use, acidification, and marine and terrestrial eutrophication. Sensitivity analyses indicated significant variance across impact categories if beef cattle are reared in South Africa, France or the United States, including a 16-fold difference in land occupation. Biophysical allocation of co-products reduced environmental burdens of beef burgers. However, owing to a 68% higher NDU per serving, reflecting higher fibre and essential fatty acid content, plant-based patties are associated with 81–87% less climate change and 92–95% less marine eutrophication per NDU compared with beef burger patties. Accounting for carbon opportunity cost of land further increased the climate change advantage of plant-based patties by 25–44%. A simple extrapolation indicates that switching from beef to vegetable patties in the UK could save between 9.5 and 11 million tonnes CO 2 e annually, representing up to 2.4% of territorial GHG emissions.
Highlights
In 2018, an estimated 2.2 million infection-attributable cancer cases were diagnosed worldwide
To ensure its persistence in infected B cells, Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) enters the latency phase resulting in the silencing of some viral genes, an event that is crucial for evading host cell immunity [9]
EBV-infected from the germinal center shut down virus gene expression, only occasionally germinal center B cells and memory B cells upregulate the remaining BART miRNAs by switching on EBNA1 expression when they are required to proliferate [56,57]
Summary
In 2018, an estimated 2.2 million infection-attributable cancer cases were diagnosed worldwide. To ensure its persistence in infected B cells, EBV enters the latency phase resulting in the silencing of some viral genes, an event that is crucial for evading host cell immunity [9]. Latency 0, characterized by the absence of viral gene expression, is observed in non-dividing memory B cells [9] During these different latency programs, the virus utilizes non-coding RNAs, including viral microRNAs [16]. The small non-coding, non-polyadenylated RNAs EBER-1 and EBER-2 are abundantly expressed in both EBV-infected non-malignant and cancerous cells [19]. MiRNAs are highly conserved, small, non-coding RNAs important for gene expression in various organisms, including humans. MiRNAs outnumber coding sequences in the human genome Their role in gene expression is not limited to normal functions but are important in the development of disease. We consider the functions of the EBV-encoded miRNAs and of other ncRNAs, in normal and cancer cells, and highlight their potential clinical utility
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