Billions of people around the world eat food every day. Food is more than energy whether it is sugar, grease, or carbs. But how big of a problem is what we eat daily? So, we have got these two factors coming together. One is we all need to eat healthier, and on the other side, we need to eat more sustainably because food production and consumption have a footprint on the environment. About 25 percent of all the global climate change problems we are seeing can be associated back to the food and the choices that we are actually making about what we eat daily. This is higher than all of the cars on the planet. In fact, it’s about two folds as much global warming pollution as cars. A lot of people feel really powerless when it comes to climate change like they can’t make a difference. And researches show that your personal decisions can really make a difference. Global food production accounts for 40 percent of land use 30 percent of global gas emissions. So, what a healthy and sustainable, diet looked like. The important thing to remember though is a healthy diet isn't absolutely the same as a sustainable diet. It's not just the foods themselves that might be the issue. It can be the way food is produced and eat.
For example, if you are eating a single serving of beef, you wind up emitting about 330 grams of carbon footprint. That’s like driving a car three kilometers. Now, if you chose to eat chicken instead, there’s more than a five-fold emission drop. Shift to fish and you see the number go below even more. Livestock accounts for a bit over 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If that sort of looks low to you, consider it about compares to transportation. We are taking all the cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships on the planet combined! This is partly because ruminant animals like cows and sheep – they are just gassy! And the methane they produce is at least 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Plus, it takes a lot of fertilizer, land and about a billion tons of grain to feed all that livestock. And you could feed 3 billion people with that grain; if we were just directly eating these grains ourselves, it would eliminate a lot of the CO2 that comes out from cattle production. So, it’s clear that meat has a pretty big carbon footprint, but it’s also worth remembering that not all livestock is raised equally. So, the point is vegan is the way to go for the least impact on the planet, but it’s not that pretty different, in terms of emission. So, fish and chicken a few times a week; meat maybe once a month, plenty of plant-based foods, and of course, loads of olive oil. Exclude off like 90 percent of your meat intake is more important than ignoring all of your meat. We don’t all have to be vegan completely. If we can just reduce our meat intake, every little effort helps. And if you can bring it down a lot, you can help mitigate climate change. Just bringing down your portion size to 4 ounces can reduce your emissions by half. That’s a huge impact! In fact, the doctors are telling us we are eating about twice as much meat as we really need for a healthy diet. The good news is, we are paying attention to our doctors. In the last decade, there’s been a 19 percent decrease in the amount of beef we eat. All these things that you are already being told are good for you also happen to be good for the planet.
A healthy diet plan includes less meat, less dairy, fewer potatoes, and a lot more plants. However, to be a true converter, you need to pretty much give up meat, chicken and fish and move into nuts, legumes, and seeds. So, what would this diet look like on your plate? Well, around half the plate would be filled with fruit, nuts and veggies. And the other half would have things like whole grains, plant proteins like lentils and beans, some veg, a very small amount of dairy and meat and some plant oils, maybe some control sugars. This diet allows for around two and a half thousand calories each day. If you were following the diet, you could have one boiled egg once a week. Just a glass of milk a day covers all your daily requirements. Globally, the diet means that we need to reduce our consumption of red meat and sugar and double our intake of veg, pulses, nuts and fruits. So, it's not just about the food we eat and the way it's produced. It's also about the way we behave this food. We also want to look at the packaging, for example. Plastic has a bad impact on the environment, but it's lighter than glass and therefore for transport it can have a lower carbon footprint. And also, the volumes of things. So, if you compare, for example, concentrated orange juice to fresh orange juice, because it’s lower volume, you don’t have the transport costs and the environmental footprint of that. Buying seasonally and locally can also make a big difference. All these things that you are already being told are good for you also happen to be good for the betterment of the planet. So, what we eat daily is a big part of the climate puzzle. This means, we may not all be able to afford solar panels on our house, an electric car but we all have to eat every day. And choices we make can add up to really big impacts. And since meat has a pretty big carbon footprint, we need to be thoughtful about how much we eat. We know that in the future, we might have more mouths to feed. If we are going to eat sustainably in the years to come and the decades to come, we are going to have to change the way we eat.
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