Three Ways to Adjust Your Food Habits and Help the Global Climate
Everyone needs to eat. It's a part of daily life. With many cultures and customs blended into food and eating, changing dietary habits may not be a simple task. However, making smart food choices can impact more than just your personal health. Changing your diet is one of the most significant ways you can help reduce carbon emissions.
The First: Eat a More Plant-Based Diet
Aside from the health benefits of eating less meat and incorporating more vegetables into your diet (such as reducing the likelihood of cancer, stroke, or heart disease), eating a diet richer in plant foods can also significantly reduce your carbon footprint. A study in 2014 found that vegetarians have roughly half of the carbon footprint of meat-eaters, and vegans even less [1]. Some of the most comprehensive assessments of global greenhouse gas emissions estimate that as much as 50% of emissions come from raising livestock alone [2]. By reducing the amount of meat you consume, you can help to avoid greenhouse gas emissions from raising livestock, as lowering global meat consumption will in turn lower meat production, and thus greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions as seen today could be reduced by as much as 70% if a vegan diet were adopted worldwide, and by 63% for a vegetarian diet [2]. In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, reducing meat consumption will help reduce water usage, as it takes approximately 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef! [3] By even just reducing your meat consumption to one meat-less day per week, you can help greatly reduce both your carbon and your water footprint. Raising livestock also requires large amounts of land, and often this land is acquired through deforestation. It is estimated that eating a plant-based diet thus has the potential to be the fourth most impactful way to address climate change (out of the 100 top rated solutions in Drawdown), with a total reduction of 66 gigatons of carbon emissions.
Meatless Mondays
Even going meatless for one day per week has significant benefits on the environment. It is estimated that over the course of a year, if a person goes meatless just one day per week, it would be the equivalent of taking their car off the road for 320 miles [4]. When projected nationally, "if the entire U.S. did not eat meat or cheese for just one day a week, it would be the equivalent of not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road" [4]. Over the long term, this would have significant impacts on reducing carbon emissions. Today, Meatless Monday is active in 44 countries and gains continual support. To read more about the campaign, click on the links below: |
The Second: Buy Local or Unprocessed Foods
Purchasing locally-grown, organic produce is another great way to reduce overall carbon emissions. Foods that are processed conventionally, or through large-scale, mechanized agriculture, often must travel thousands of miles before reaching a supermarket to be sold. It is estimated that on average, in the United States food travels 1,500 miles from farm to consumer [5]. Not only do trucks emit great amounts of fossil fuel as they drive along highway systems to deliver food, but they also must fill their tanks with gasoline frequently along the way (which only further adds to fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions). One study in Iowa estimated that "the conventional food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more CO2 than the local and regional systems" [5]. Additionally, this study found that locally-sourced food only traveled an average of about 45 miles. Thus, fossil fuel emissions can be greatly reduced by purchasing locally-grown foods, as the lesser travel distance simply means lesser emissions.
Wicomico County has several great locations to purchase locally-grown foods!
To the left is the Camden Avenue Farmers Market. Open Tuesday afternoons from 2:30pm-6:00pm (5:30pm during the winter months), this farmers market features local farmers and business owners selling everything from locally-sourced meat, produce, dairy, breads and pastries, flowers, and much more! Check out the website "Local Harvest" for a list of the many farmers markets, restaurants, and grocery stores in the area that sell locally-grown foods! |
The Third: Reduce Your Food Waste
Food waste is a major problem in the United States in particular. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that at the national level, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted each year, correlating to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010 [6]. Not only does this mean food that could feed starving families is instead taken to landfills, but decomposing food in landfills also produces great amounts of methane, one of the greenhouse gases that contributes to climate change [6]. At a global scale, 4.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent are added into the atmosphere each year as a result of food waste, which translates to about 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions from human causes [2]. In countries like the U.S., addressing food waste needs to occur at the level of both producers and consumers. This can be done by preventing food waste at the production scale before it happens, and then by reallocating leftover food for another use (although to most effectively address emissions, avoiding waste to being with would be preferred to finding a different use) [2]. Reducing food waste is listed as the third-best solution out of the 100 ways to address climate change devised by Hawken and his team. 26.2 gigatons of emissions would be reduced if food waste was cut in half by 2050, and taking into consideration avoided deforestation would avert another 44.4 gigatons [2]. In sum, as a consumer it is best to understand that reducing food waste plays a major role in addressing climate change and global emissions. It is important to realize that date labels on packaging do not always mean the food is expired, but rather suggest when food should taste best. Additionally, destandardizing the concept of "perfect", unbruised, unblemished produce is a step toward decreasing food waste by including "ugly" produce on the shelves for purchase as well, and encouraging consumers to buy this produce.
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
- Michael Pollan
Photo credit: WILL POWER, flickr
Want to know what else you can do to help mitigate climate change? Check out these pages below to learn more about ways you can reduce carbon emissions!
References
- Scarborough, P., Appleby, P. N., Mizdrak, A., Briggs, A. D. M., Travis, R. C., Bradbury, K. E., and Key, T. J. (2014). Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Climate Change, 125, 179-192.
- Hawken, P. (Ed.). (2017). Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
- Curit, R. (2017). How Does Eating Meat Impact Your Water Footprint? One Green Planet. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/how-does-eating-meat-impact-your-water-footprint/
- About Meatless Monday. (2018). Earth Day Network. Retrieved from www.earthday.org/take-action/about-meatless-monday/
- DeWeerdt, S. (2018). Is Local Food Better? Worldwatch Institute: Vision for a Sustainable World. Retrieved from http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064
- United States Department of Agriculture. U.S. Food Waste Challenge: FAQ’s. Retrieved from https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm