Food and Environment

How Food and the Environment are linked:

When we hear the word food, we never think that it is related to the environment.    Many factors including farming method, where food is grown, what pesticides and fertilisers are used, what is fed to our livestock, and so on, affect the environmental impact of the food we buy and eat.

Currently 86% of the food we eat comes from wheat, rice, maize, sugar, barley, soy, palm and potato. Today the food we eat, our habits our very similar. This could mean that we are more vulnerable ot a food crisis.

How we are affecting the environment by the food we eat:

Foods made from red meat may seem innocent, but they have a major impact on the environment.  Here’s why:

·         Animals like cows need a large amount of food and water to survive    

·         Today, a large amount of forests are being cleared.

·         Animals produce a lot of waste, including methane gas, which must be dealt with properly or it damages the environment.

·         One 75g beef burger contributes nearly 8kg of greenhouse gases per serving. By comparison, that's almost four times the amount of greenhouse gasses produced by fish.

What we can do:

·         Being conscious about both the environmental impacts and healthiness of the foods we eat is an important step to being more sustainble.   So here are a few ways to reduce the bad impact on the environment:

·         Eat lower on the food chain – more fruits, vegetables, and grains, and less red meat.

·         Choose local or sustainable fish and seafood that is lower on the food chain (mussels, clams, squid).

·         Look for fresh foods with the fewest processing steps. This means less work for the environment and less harm to us humans.

·         Buy organic – organic farms use less pesticides which in turn don’t harm the environment us much.

·         Watch your waste – water, energy, pesticides, and pollution went into the production of the wasted food, and food waste ends up in landfills where it releases methane gas as it decomposes.

·         If removing red meat from your diet seems difficult, the best thing you can do is reduce the amount you have.

With the global food systems being non-sustainable, it becomes important that we think how we eat and rethink to change the processes involved in the way we produce food – mindfully and efficiently working on this to derivable solutions. Driving climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and drastic changes in land and water use can all be ‘managed’ with the food in our plate – so that our environment is not pushed beyond limits by the food we produce.  It is imperative to remember that eating more sustainable and following the sustainable table is the first step towards sustainability.

Picture Credits: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/your-kitchen-and-the-planet-the-impact-of-our-food-on-the-environment