This article was originally published in the December 2016 edition of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter , a publication of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy .

Vegetarian diet with dairy makes the most of available agricultural acreage.

Looking to adopt a dietary pattern that has the least food-print impact on agricultural land? New research from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University might surprise you: Scientists found that a vegan diet was not the best choice for feeding the most people from the area of available land. Instead, a vegetarian diet that includes dairy products was the most efficient use of agricultural acreage.

The study, published in the journal Elementa , is the first to calculate U.S. agricultural land needed for different dietary scenarios. The new food-print model measured per-person land requirements of 10 different scenarios ranging from the typical American diet to a purely vegan one. Potentially, scientists concluded, agricultural land in the contiguous U.S. could feed up to 800 million people twice what can be supported based on current average diets.

Our aim is to identify potential agricultural-sustainability strategies by addressing both food consumption and production. Lead author, Christian Peters, Ph.D.

Dietary choices can influence the ability of agriculture to meet our need for food, says lead author Christian Peters, Ph.D ., associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Our approach challenges the 20th century emphasis on increasing yield and production. Improving crop yields remains vitally important, but it is not the only way to increase the number of people fed per acre. Our aim is to identify potential agricultural-sustainability strategies by addressing both food consumption and production.