Think Before You Eat
How Our Food Choices Impact the Environment
Let’s get one thing straight: I LOVE food. I love everything about it. I love making food, eating food, sharing food… all of it. Naturally, when I learned that my food choices could impact the environment, I felt very conflicted. I was intrigued, but I didn’t know what I could really do. I was NOT going to give up my favorite foods and go vegan, that’s for sure.
One thing that I am guilty of is feeling helpless when it comes to climate change. I often feel like no matter how much I do, it won’t make that much of a difference. But what research is showing more and more is that YOUR personal decisions can have a huge impact on the environment. A step towards a better world is a step in the right direction, no matter how small.
When you think of climate change and global warming, what do you think of? I used to visualize huge factories burning fossil fuels, or a bunch of cars stuck in traffic emitting greenhouse gases into the air. Food wasn’t part of the picture.
So how big of a problem is what I eat? Can it really make much of a difference in something as big as global warming? The answer is yes. What we put on our plates matters a lot. In fact, nothing changes the face of the planet as much as the way we eat. About 25 percent of all the global climate change problems we’re seeing can be attributed back to our daily food choices. This impact is greater than all of the cars on the planet. In fact, it contributes to about twice as much global warming pollution as cars.
But before I get into it, I want you to know that this is not going to be another long essay about why you should go vegan or grow all your own food. For many of us, that’s just unrealistic or impractical, especially since we live under our parents’ roofs and don’t always get to decide everything. What I’m trying to do is to provide you with the information about how our food choices relate to the environment, and encourage you to be more mindful of what and how you eat.
I like to imagine the food we eat to have a lifecycle with different stages, from production to consumption and then to disposal. There are ways you can help the environment in each of these stages.
So let’s start at the beginning: food production. SO much energy goes into producing, packaging, and transporting our food. In Hong Kong, most of our food is imported from all across the world. This means the food we eat has traveled a lot of food miles to get to our plates. Food delivery relies on transportation, but pollutants are being emitted during this process of transportation. In Hong Kong, approximately 277,100 tons of food is imported into the city daily, employing 140 transportation vehicles. This results in nearly 2000 kilograms of nitrogen oxide getting emitted on a daily basis.
What you can do:
Learn more about where your food comes from! Read food packaging labels and check out where the food you are eating was grown and produced.
Try to buy more locally-sourced, locally-grown food. Support local businesses and go to farmer’s markets to buy your groceries instead of supermarkets.
Similarly, you could even try growing some of your own food, like simple veggies and herbs you can use for cooking. Check out Melle’s blog post on gardening to learn more!Now let’s move on to the next stage: food diets. The types of food we eat have a MASSIVE effect on our environment.
Let’s take a look at a delicious piece of grass-fed ribeye steak. If you really look at everything that went into making a single serving of beef, you end up emitting about 330 grams of carbon. That’s like driving a car three miles. Now, if you choose to have chicken instead, there’s more than a five-fold drop in emissions to 52 grams of carbon. Switch that to fish, now that’s only 40 grams of carbon emissions.
Livestock accounts for over 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If you don’t think that’s a big number, just know that’s about equal to transportation. I’m talking about all the cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships on the planet combined! This is partially because cows and sheep are ruminant animals- they're very gassy! The methane they generate is at least 25 times more toxic than carbon dioxide. Moreover, it takes a lot of land, fertilizer, and about a billion tons of grain to feed all those animals. And you could feed 3.5 billion people with that grain; if we were just directly eating these grains ourselves, it would eliminate a lot of the CO2 that is emitted from cattle production.
Of course, veganism is the best possible diet for the environment. But in terms of emissions, a vegetarian diet is not that far off either. Don’t want to cut meat out of your diet entirely? Well, let me introduce to you...
THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET!
The environmental impact of this diet is actually quite similar to that of a vegan or vegetarian diet. The Mediterranean diet is a lot less meat-heavy compared to the average American diet, but still includes meats that produce lower emissions, such as fish and poultry. It also consists of a lot of plant-based foods, and uses a lot of olive oil for cooking instead of butter. You can learn more about the Mediterranean diet here. As Maya Almaraz, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, said, “We don’t all have to be vegan. We don’t all even have to be vegetarian. If we can just reduce our meat intake, every little bit helps. And if you can bring it down a lot, you can help the climate a lot.” It’s not about quitting your meat consumption, it’s really about reducing it. Actually, it’s not even really about reducing it, it’s more about reducing red meat consumption, and switching to other meats that have a smaller impact on the environment. If we all switched to a Mediterranean diet, it could actually solve 15 percent of global warming pollution by 2050. If everyone were to just move towards it, that would be equivalent to taking somewhere around a billion cars off of the streets, in terms of vehicle emissions each year. That’s HUGE! Not only that, but the Mediterranean diet is also good for your health too. Remember, most of the foods that you’ve been told are good for your body also happen to be good for the planet.
REMINDER!
I’m not trying to force you to take up an entirely new diet. I can’t say I eat a Mediterranean diet myself. When I first learned about how my diet could impact the planet, I was really ambitious and decided to go vegan. I failed the first day and just gave up. Recently, however, I have been (slowly) trying to cut back on my meat consumption, starting with red meats like beef, then lamb and pork. Changing your diet is not easy. Here are a few things I’ve learned that could help you:
Do your research. You need to know why you’re doing it in the first place. This is what will help you stay motivated to keep going. Learn more about the environmental impacts of what you’re eating. Once you have facts stored in your brain, it will make you more conscious of your food and your footprint.
Talk to your family. I don’t really get to choose what we eat at home because I don’t do the shopping. If you’re like me, it’s important to let your family know about your change in diet and the reasons behind that. You could even encourage them to do the same! If they have any concerns regarding it, you should also make sure you can assure and explain them. For example, I have a really weak body and an iron deficiency, and red meat is a major source of protein and iron in my diet. By cutting these foods out of my diet, I was potentially putting myself at a health risk. So, I now have to take iron supplements and find other ways to maintain my protein intake, like beans, nuts, seeds, and eggs.
Set small goals for yourself. Try doing Meatless Mondays. If that’s too hard, just go meatless for one meal or don’t eat beef for a day each week. Start small, don’t be too ambitious. And don’t forget to actually complete your goals! Add it to your calendar, set an alarm or reminder on your phone, whatever works for you.
Keep yourself accountable. Whether that be through a friend or a log, make sure you’re sticking to your plan and achieving your goals. But also don’t be too hard on yourself! It’s not easy, remember that small change is better than no change, so keep going!
Explore. As a food lover myself, this has been one of my favorite things about all of this. Try different recipes you’ve never made before. Try different dishes you’ve never eaten before. Visit that vegetarian or Mediterranean restaurant you’ve never been to before. Have fun!
Last but certainly not least, let’s talk about the final stage in our food’s lifecycle: food waste. If global food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, just behind China and the United States. So it really is an enormous problem and one of the easiest ways to address climate change.
In the US, roughly 40% of the food produced never gets eaten. Food waste constitutes 37% of the total landfill waste. When food decomposes, it isn’t just stinky. It releases potent greenhouse gases. So essentially, we’re trashing our planet to grow food that no one eats.
So what can we do?
Shop realistically. Take or buy only what you can eat. Don’t take or buy more than you can eat. Make meal plans for each week so you know exactly what and how much to buy.
Check the expiration dates of your foods before buying. If you leave them in your fridge or pantry until they expire,you will have to throw them out- it’s a waste!
Check your portion sizes. Only cook what you can eat. Don’t cook more than you can eat. Finish all the food on your plate! My parents always told me that I wouldn’t be allowed to eat dessert until I finished everything from the main course, and that always motivated me to eat all my food because I’m a sucker for sweets.
Consider reusing your food scraps. There are so many ways that you could work with them, so get creative! Make a soup or broth. Feed them to your pets. Try composting. You can learn more about what to do with your food scraps here.
Donate edible leftovers. So much of our untouched, uneaten, and perfectly edible food gets wasted. If you have extra food that you know you won’t eat, donate it to someone else who needs it. Food Angel is an organization in Hong Kong that has a Food Rescue Program where you can donate your high-quality surplus foods. Learn more about it here. Not only are you saving the planet, but you’re also fighting hunger!
Food is something we need and consume on a daily basis. By changing the way we shop for food, eat food, and dispose of our food, we are essentially changing a huge part of our lifestyle. It’s not easy, but nothing good comes easy. Food accounts for so much of our emissions, so by making small changes in our daily lives, we are effectively slowing global warming. I think if there’s one thing you could do to help save the planet, it would be to be more thoughtful about your food choices. Remember to think about the environment before (and after) you eat!
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Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUnJQWO4YJY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RlxySFrkIM
https://www.hongkongcan.org/hk/article/food-miles-facts-eng/
https://hongkongfp.com/2016/01/24/farms-in-the-sky-fewer-food-miles-less-waste-more-jobs/
