A student eats his lunch while sitting in his classroom at Shanghai High School in Shanghai, China. Credit:Qilai Shen

Yet, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), daily meat and dairy consumption in China is expected to keep increasing over the next few decades.

However environmentalists argue if the reductions recommended by the guidelines were to actually occur, it could be a major win for the environment. Agriculture is one of the primary contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, and the meat industry - and particularly beef production - is one of the biggest culprits. In addition to the huge amounts of land, water and food required to raise livestock, cattle are infamous for belching large quantities of methane into the atmosphere. And cattle raising, in particular, is known for being a major contributor to deforestation, which also drives up global carbon emissions.

Last month, the World Resources Institute released a report outlining the changes in land use and greenhouse gas emissions that would accompany a number of hypothetical global diet shifts, including reductions in the consumption of beef and animal products as a whole. And earlier this year, researchers from the University of Oxford published a paper suggesting that a more plant-based diet worldwide could cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by anywhere from 29 to 70 per cent.

Dr Marco Springmann, the lead author of that paper, noted that such changes in China alone could have major health and environmental impacts. According to his research, reducing China's average red meat consumption by about 100 grams per day in the year 2050 could help avert 2.2 million deaths and cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by more than a billion metric tons.