Planning a BBQ? Not if you want to save the planet

Meat sizzling on the barbecue might be synonymous with summer, but consumers should re-think their menus to save the planet, a US research group has said.

If the biggest beef and lamb consumers reduced their weekly intake to 1.5 burgers by 2050, it could cut greenhouse gas emissions and save forests from becoming farmland, the World Resources Institute said.

Currently, Americans and Europeans eat double this amount and Brazilians three times, Timothy Searchinger, lead author of the report and a researcher at Princeton University, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"This is the most promising and most realistic solution," he said, adding that it would be harder to reduce the world's overall meat consumption.

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Diners in the US, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the former Soviet Union make up a quarter of the world's population, but ate more than half of the world's meat from ruminants - such as cattle, sheep and goats - in 2010, the institute said. Agriculture accounts for 11 per cent of planet-heating global emissions, according to the United Nations, most of which comes from gases emitted by livestock during digestion and in manure.

The expansion of agricultural land also creates emissions through the draining of peatland, releasing carbon dioxide - one of the main greenhouse gases - into the air and through the felling of trees, which absorb carbon dioxide.

Global food demand is projected to grow by more than 50% by 2050 due to population and income growth.