Veggie sausages and burgers up to ten times better for environment than meat, study finds

Breakthrough impact assessment will ‘make it easier for all of us to have healthier, more sustainable diets’

Study is ‘first step’ towards enabling people to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food, say Oxford researchers (Getty)

A huge study of the environmental impact of 57,000 food products in the UK and Ireland has highlighted the extent to which plant-based meat alternatives are better for the planet than consuming meat.

While products such as veggie sausages and veggie burgers contain numerous ingredients and still require manufacturing, packaging and transport, compared to meat they mostly had between a fifth, to less than a tenth of the environmental impact of similar meat products, the researchers said.

The team, led by academics at the University of Oxford said their study was the first time a "transparent and reproducible method" of assessing the environmental impact of multi-ingredient foods had been undertaken.