This is How Our Food Choices Directly and Indirectly Affect our Environment (And how to take part in fixing it)
We are quite often reminded of how screwed up our planet is. Fires where millions of animals, homes and trees are burned to the ground, droughts, excessive heat, famine. Our oceans are acidifying and a lot of the land can’t produce food, due to desertification. Turning on the news channel or scrolling on social media can make us feel stress, hopelessness and sadness.
It is easy to think there is no solution, and it is also easy to think that I am not part of the problem and let someone else solve this. The truth is, this is everyone’s fault, and our food choices have a lot to do with it. But fear not! there is hope. There are millions of good things happening in the world, and it is true there is not a better time to be alive than this one. So, let’s get our facts straight and help clean this mess, together!👫👯♀️
Let’s start by debunking some myths, starting by the biggest one:
“The meat industry is one of the biggest causing agents of climate change. Therefore, if I stop eating me (and everyone stops eating meat) we will save the planet” 🐮🐷
Welp, it is not that simple. First of all, it is not the meat industry alone that’s at fault. The BIG Agriculture industry, which doesn’t only produce meat, but also the soybeans, wheat and corn that people who don’t eat meat eat. In the hypothetical case that everyone stops eating meat, then the demand for corn, soy, and wheat will be so much higher that the land used previously for meat (we’re still talking hypothetically here, btw) will be used for the aforementioned grains. The use of water, synthetic fertilizer, and the tillage used in our land contributes just as negatively to climate change as conventional meat production.
If you have done some research, you may know that a big chunk of the corn that is grown in the world goes to feed livestock, so by eliminating meat altogether, one might think that then we won’t need that much corn, but the demand for fake meats and other legumes would increase, leaving us more or less with the same dry, infertile soil.
Let’s take India for example. India is one of the countries with the most vegetarians, but it is also one of the biggest polluters. With nearly 30% of the population being vegetarian, greenhouse emissions are through the roof. So ditching meat is not the answer, although it could be a good step. More on this later.
“We all need to buy sustainable in order to fix our planet” 📦
Not really. Let’s put it this way: sustainability will keep our planet as it currently is. That is what the word ‘sustainable’ means. If everyone in the planet decides to be sustainable, there will be no change whatsoever in our planet. It is certainly much better than being wasteful, or in agriculture, conventional, but it won’t save us. This brings me to my other point:
We tend to overestimate what sustainable brands and food producers do because it sounds nice, it gives us a false sense of merit and it justifies our purchase. The truth is, brands are brands, and whatever good you’re buying, even if made and packed in a sustainable way, there is lots of waste that goes from the creation of, let’s say that new protein bar, to packing it and ship it to you or the store. Just know, that the best option there is in terms of consuming goods is to buy the least possible, and to reuse as much as you can. (speaking about clothes, for example.) Worn that dress twice then donating it or throwing it away? well, that’s wasteful, and it has indirectly contributed to the big mess of a planet we are in.
So, what can I do as an individual to help combat climate change? Well, good that you ask. There are many things we can do, here are a few:
Eat less meat, no meat, or better meat.🐄
This is an interesting one. A lot of people on the internet advice us to ditch the meat entirely, or to walk our way to the minimum possible amount of meat we can consume, but, here’s Mariu telling me that I can eat meat, just better meat, what is that?
Consuming meat that was raised in a traditional (not conventional) way, what we nowadays call Regenerative Agriculture, is a powerful weapon to reverse climate change. You read that right! REVERSING IT, not just stopping it. Getting into the specifics of this will have to be left to another post, but, if you’re curious about better meat consumption and WHY this is a good thing for our planet, here are some resources: this TED talk talks about it, and also 9 other ways to reduce climate change; this BOOK ; (fun fact: I found it through Leo DiCaprio’s website and I fell in love. They have a ton of resources) and this BLOG are good places to start.
Cutting down our meat consumption is still important, by not eating a lot, we then can afford the regeneratively raised meat. (ha!) But also, having access to good quality meat is hard, specially when buying from conventional grocery stores. The less meat/animal products we eat, the better it is a lot of the times. Do I recommend to cut meat entirely? Not really, but that is a conversation you should have with your health professional, not with me.
Something I like to do when I eat out: ordering the vegetarian option when I don’t trust that the restaurant I am eating at has meat that was raised with my quality standards.
Consume less, specially things of single use🚫
We are all guilty of this. When convenience knocks on the door, our first response is to let it in, no questions asked. But, how wasteful are we? Like, seriously! We put our produce in plastic bags that get discarded the minute they enter the house. We buy carrots in bags, lettuce in plastic containers… all of that gets discarded right away. There are so many vegetables that don’t come in plastic, choose those ones instead. You will save money, too.
I know of people who buy plastic and aluminum plates and utensils so they don’t have to do the dishes later. All the wet swiffers, and the paper towels, and don’t get me started with the disposable razors. We are a wasteful society, and it takes a huge toll on our planet. This is an invitation for all of us to reflect and to think of ways we can be less wasteful. Here are a few tips to what I just mentioned:
Get a damn mop. (gotta give u some tough love.)
Get a damn cleaning cloth.
Do your dishes, and tell the people you live with not to be lazy bums so they do their dishes, too.
Avoid buying vegetables in plastic. Do it only when necessary.
And whenever you have to buy plastic, recycle.
And remember, plastic bags aren’t recyclable most of the time, so try as hard as you can to avoid them. they’re literally just trash.
3. Buy your groceries at the farmers market🍇🥒
This way you will be buying local. Something that is important to know about our food industry is that a lot of it is monopolized. The people who lobby congress so they can feed our cattle skittles. (it’s a real thing) They also grow vegetables in ways that are unsustainable for our planet. By buying at the farmer’s market, you will support not an industry, but a group of individuals who most likely CARE about their land and the planet, not to mention, you’ll be helping the local economy.
4. COMPOST (which is one of my resolutions for 2020!)
Throwing your scrap vegetables away together with your trash creates methane, which is a much stronger gas than CO2. This can be avoided by composting.
Composting your food scraps (organic matter) is super beneficial for our earth. By composting, nutrients are sent back to the earth and this conditions the soil to hold more moisture and to be fertile. One of the biggest problems with modern agriculture is that our earth is stripped from its nutrients, which causes desertification (it means that no food can grow in it!). This is also why, the production of non-animal products can be also super detrimental to the earth. We need regeneration, and that is achieved by composting and by Regenerative farming.
And then, the basics 📝
walk whenever possible or take public transit instead of using your car.
Recycle.
Be a kind human
Don’t be an asshole to people who aren’t fully aware or have not made the connection about their individual responsibility with the planet.
Save water.
It’s also time to take a stand against fossil fuels and choose renewable energy. Consider the next car you buy to be electric or hybrid.
Ultimately, we cannot speak about food and the environment without speaking about politics. Choose leaders who put our environment above anything else. It’s a scary, money-hungry industry out there, and we need leaders who can take down most of the systems that are in place and create better ones, with the health of the planet as the top priority.
To finish, I’ll leave you with a quote I recently read by journalist Michael Pollan:
“What would happen if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?”
We are all part of an ecosystem, and we need to make the connection with how our individual and collective action affects our environment.
Hoping this blog post sparked something in you! Let’s start a conversation but more importantly, let’s take action!👊🏽👊🏽