PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW A planet-friendly, diet eat healthier than those who don’t.

Food production is a major contributor to climate change, and a study published Thursday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who adhere to a climate-friendly diet, one that has a lower carbon footprint, eat healthier than those who don’t.

Diego Rose, lead author and a professor of nutrition and food security at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said in a press release that people who follow a diet that has a low carbon footprint “were eating less red meat and dairy, which contribute to a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions and are high in saturated fat, and consuming more healthful foods like poultry, whole grains and plant-based proteins.”

Researchers examined the diets of 16,000 Americans and ranked them by the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per 1,000 calories consumed. They also rated the nutritional value of the diets using the U.S. Healthy Eating Index.

The study discovered that people following diets that had a low carbon footprint ate an overall healthier diet. However, these diets did contain some low-emission foods that aren’t healthy, such as sugars and refined grains, the press release states. Additionally, the climate-friendly diets also contained lower amounts of important nutrients, such as iron, calcium and vitamin D.

Diets that had the most impact on the planet accounted for five times the emissions of those in the lowest-impact group. The diets consisted of more beef, veal, pork, game, dairy and solid fats per 1,000 calories than the diets with low carbon footprint.

Martin Heller, co-author and researcher with the University of Michigan’s Sustainable Systems Center at the School for Environment and Sustainability, tells U.S. News that adopting a diet with a low carbon footprint is “beneficial for health and the environment” and that it doesn’t take drastic measures to make a difference.

Heller says that one of the biggest changes people can make is to replace beef with plant-based alternatives, such as beans, peas and lentils, as well as meat alternatives, even choosing chicken over beef “is a significant benefit.”

The reason is that the production of red meat has one of the largest effects on the environment due to the amount of work it takes to produce it. A cow requires a lot more resources than a chicken, or plants, to produce the same amount of calories. Cows require much more feed, and they produce methane, mostly in the form of burps, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.

Rose echoed this sentiment in the press release, saying that Americans can have both “healthier diets and reduce our food-related emissions,” and doing so “doesn’t require the extreme of eliminating food entirely.” Just a small shift from red meat to chicken “could reduce our carbon footprint and improve our health at the same time.”