The UK's best-loved dishes could become extinct as we know them in 30 years as a direct result of climate change, according to a new report released by WWF.
According to the research, chicken tikka masala, fish and chips, the cheese ploughman's and lamb cawl (a Welsh lamb stew) may taste different, need substitute ingredients and cost more as soon as 2050, because climate change could threaten the supply of key ingredients required to make up these dishes.
The report, commissioned for Earth Hour, the world's largest event to protect the planet, also calculated the environmental costs of these dishes today, given that around 20% of the UK's greenhouse emissions are attributed to food production.
The cheese ploughman's was revealed to take 2.6kg CO2e in greenhouse gas emissions to produce, the equivalent of charging a smartphone 316 times. However, the lamb cawl was the worst offender of the dishes tested, taking the equivalent of 722 smartphone charges to produce in emissions.
