Environmental Effects of Food Choices

You've probably heard of Meatless Monday's.  Many people are cutting down their meat consumption and doing a veg only meal one day a week.  This not only benefits your body, but it also benefits your budget and the environment.

All of the food that goes into each meal you eat requires energy and resources to get there.  Food miles is the distance that food travels from where it was grown, or where it lived, until it gets to your plate.  The more miles involved, the higher the impact on the environment.  Now days, food travels a lot longer than it did 100 years ago, mainly because of the big corporate grocery stores.  Stores fly in food from all over the world to make sure that you have the freshest things, no matter what season it is.  You want strawberries in January? You've got them.  But locally produces, seasonal foods cut energy use and leave a smaller impact on the environment (please please visit your local farmers market or think about signing up for a CSA!).





John Robbin's wrote a book titled Diet For a New America.  He talks a lot about factory farming and beef consumption in his book.  Cattle require a lot of water every day.  Giving up one pound of beef per year could save more water than if you stopped showering for 6 months.  For every pound of beef you DON'T eat, you save anywhere between 2,500 gallons and 5,000 gallons of water.  That's A LOT of water!!

Factory farming cattle consume mainly corn.  For each bushel of corn the cows eat, that bushel has been treated with 1.2 gallons of oil based fertilizer.  Each cow eats approximately 25 lbs of corn each day.  This is a lot of fossil fuel energy.  Cattle also use up a lot of land. About 70% of the land in the western US is used for grazing and lots, and we still import beef from other areas of the world!! You can fit up to 100,000 cattle in a feed lot. This has caused a ton of deforestation.  The main cause of deforestation in Brazil is cattle ranching - since 1970 232,000 square miles are gone.


pic from nytimes.com

These cattle also produce a lot of poop i.e waste.  It's getting into oceans, rivers and drinking water.  And not to mention, these cattle aren't let to graze on land, they are cooped up in feedlots and pumped with steroids and antibiotics.  It's a very sad life.  And people are becoming resistant to antibiotics secondary to eating treated meat.

I'm not saying don't eat meat.  I definitely eat meat.  But get to know where your meat is coming from.  Get online, find a local farm or ranch and see if you can get a share in a CSA.  Some grocery stores sell local, organic, grass fed proteins now as well.  When it's possible, look for meat like this.  Your body, and the earth, will thank you.

- John Robbin's Diet For a New America
- Joshua Rosenthal Inegrative Nutrition