Eating less meat could help mitigate the environmental pressures of global food production and allow the planet to better support a rapidly growing population, scientists have concluded.

In 2010, the global food system emitted the equivalent of 5.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane and nitrous oxide.

But with the world’s population set to hit 10 billion by 2050, the environmental costs of the food system could rise by as much as 90 per cent over the next two decades.

This would exceed so called ‘planetary boundaries’ - the level at which human action could make the Earth’s ecosystem unstable - according to a report published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"Without concerted action, we found that the environmental impacts of the food system could increase by 50 to 90% by 2050 as a result of population growth and the rise of diets high in fats, sugars and meat,” said Dr Marco Springmann, from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford.

The study analysed several options which could reduce the environmental damage caused by the international food system, and found that adopting ‘flexitarian’ diets - often called 'casual vegetarianism' - could cut global greenhouse gas emissions by more than half.