Five Ways to Make Your Diet Healthier (for the Planet)
April 22 will be the 36th anniversary of Earth Day. Have you ever stopped to think about how your dietary choices affect the health of our planet? Sure, buying organic products helps reduce the amount of pesticides and artificial fertilizers that are applied to the ground. But what about the environmental impact of transporting organic produce thousands of miles from its source to your table? How about all the energy it takes to process, package, and transport the organic convenience foods and all-natural junk food that fill the freezers and shelves of high-end whole-foods grocers? And to bring the conversation back to nutrition for a moment, how nutritious do you think those organic sugar-frosted corn flakes really are?
In honor of Earth Day, here are five ways to make your diet healthier for your body and the planet.
- Become a "locavore." On average, the food we eat travels 1500 miles from its source to our plates, guzzling fuel and spewing CO2 emissions all the way. With more and more organic food being imported from South America (and further!) to meet growing demand, buying organic is not necessarily environmentally friendly. Consistently choosing foods from growers close to where you live can significantly reduce the environmental impact of your diet. To find farms and growers near you, visit LocalHarvest.org
- Eat seasonally. When you eat foods that are not in season where you live, they have either been stored from another season or transported from another climate. Both consume energy and degrade the nutritional quality of the food. For the freshest, most flavorful, most economical, and most eco-conscious foods, plan your menus around what is being harvested in your area.To find out what's in season where you live, see this guide from SustainableTable.org.
- Eat fewer packaged and preprocessed foods. Even when they are organic or “all-natural,” processed foods consume energy and water, add cost, and create waste at every step of production, packaging, and distribution. To lower your food bill, improve the nutritional quality of your meals, and reduce the negative impact of your diet on the planet, buy whole, unprocessed foods whenever possible.
- Support small farms. Large industrial farms (whether organic or conventional) generally end up cultivating just one or two crops because it is more efficient for them. But a monoculture is tough on the environment, stripping the land of certain nutrients and overloading it with particular waste products. Small farms are more likely to grow a diverse mix of crops and raise a variety of animals, which creates a healthier, more sustainable ecosystem.
- Choose organic. Organic foods preserve healthier soil, air, and groundwater by eliminating or strictly limiting the use of pesticides, drugs, hormones, and artificial fertilizers. Organic practices are healthier for farmers, neighbors of farmers, consumers, and the planet than industrial farming practices. But buying organic is not enough to maintain a healthy environment: Choosing foods that are local, seasonal, unprocessed, and sustainably grown is just as important.
Finally, in case you think I’m setting the bar unreasonably high, I should say that I still buy foods that are not produced where I live. Although I care about the planet, I’m not ready to give up chocolate, coffee, or olive oil. On the other hand, the sharp Cheddar they make at Trickling Springs Dairy, 30 miles from my house, is every bit as good as the stuff they truck in from Wiconsin.
Even if your diet isn’t 100% locally sourced or organically raised, every time you choose a locally-produced food over one shipped from across the country or globe, you reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and make the air a little cleaner.
To learn more about the environmental impact of your food choices or for help putting these ideas into action, check out these terrific websites:
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Posted by: TD | Apr 10, 2008 4:19:19 PM
Shouldn't there be something on that list about eating more plant-based meals? Or, even better, eating *only* plant-based meals?
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than transport.
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nation's scientific panel on climate change has asked the world to please eat less meat.
This part of greening one's diet is often ignored when it is something that could make a huge difference. Is eating only plants this controversial?
Living on a plant-based diet is not difficult, it's not unhealthy, it's not unattainable, it's not expensive (or at least, no more expensive than a healthy-ish diet containing animal products), and it's something which should be seriously considered when people look at how they can make a difference.
I've been subscribing to this blog ever since I found the very useful and enjoyable Nutrition Data website, and I'm very dissappointed to note there is absolutely no mention of this important and relevant possibility of making one's diet planet-healthier.
Posted by: s | Apr 10, 2008 5:31:43 PM
Animals raised on small organic farms actually use more energy than factory farms (per animal), and have a larger carbon footprint. Mostly, they just make yuppies feel better about eating meat. The single biggest thing one can do for the planet, in terms of diet, is to go vegan. Seems to me that this might bear mentioning if one is going to talk about food choices and the environment.
Posted by: jonathan harrington | Apr 10, 2008 6:30:41 PM
Sharon Begley, Senior Editor and science writer for Newsweek, recently wrote an article (4/14/08), entitled "Sounds Good But...We can't afford to make any more mistakes in how to 'save the planet," http://www.newsweek.com/id/130628 which addresses a number of prevailing misconceptions about how we can reduce our carbon footprint. For instance, many people believe that products produced close to home are invariably more climate friendly than those transported from far away. Unfortunately, this may not be the case. More often than not, emissions resulting from the transportation of products from the orchard, farm or factory floor to our local market only constitute a small percent of the total climate impact of our consumption. Let’s look at an example. UK based, The Carbon Trust, recently completed a ‘lifecycle analysis’ for potato chips made by Walkers, the UK’s largest snack food producer. In addition to transportation, raw material processing, manufacturing, marketing, storage, consumer use and disposal and recycling all contribute to the greenhouse gases that are warming our world. The study examined everything from potato production to cooking and distribution methods. The researchers found that farmer land use and production practices, energy used for frying, packaging and waste disposal contribute most to the carbon footprint of the product, while transportation accounted for only around 10% of total emissions. Begley does not say that consumers should not buy local, nor do I. Supporting local producers, especially organic farmers, strengthens the local economy, government and community. But we should try not to over-inflate the significance of ‘food miles’ in our consumer behavior. And remember, the only sure fire way for us to reduce our carbon footprint is to just consume less. For more information on how you can reduce your carbon footprint, visit www.climatediet.com.
Posted by: Monica Reinagel | Apr 11, 2008 11:06:32 AM
TD,
you are absolutely right; I've left a very important point off the list. Reducing our consumption of meat is a great way to make our diets earth-friendlier.
Posted by: Monica Reinagel | Apr 11, 2008 11:13:58 AM
Jonathan,
you're right, of course. The environmental impact of our food choices involves many factors, of which transportation miles is only one. But I think the percent of energy that is used transporting the products (as opposed to growing, processing, and packaging) will depend a lot on how far the food travels.
England is, relatively speaking, a small country. Trucking the potato chips around the U.K. is not going to use as much fuel as transporting (refrigerated) produce from Chile or Argentina for sale in NY or Montreal. Given a choice between similar products, the one produced closer to home is going to require less fuel to transport.
But you've also reinforced another of my points: A lot of the energy cost of foods is in the processing and packaging, so buying minimally processed, whole foods is also a very important step to reducing the carbon footprint of our diets.
Posted by: Jonathan Harrington | Apr 12, 2008 11:35:46 AM
Monica, I completely agree that minimally processed food is the way to go. Take beef for example. Before processing, producing one Kg of beef (live) results in emissions of around 11.7 kg of GHG. But a cut of choice tenderloin, processed, packaged and shipped to market causes as much as 42 kg of GHG emissions.
Posted by: Christina | Apr 19, 2008 1:28:04 AM
Awesome post,
I loved the content very much. Thanks for sharing this useful information and hope to read more from you. :)
Posted by: Samir M. Sawaya | Apr 22, 2008 1:15:09 AM
Hi,
Your worries are legitimate but it concerns mainly agglomerations of people who are so fortunate as to buy to meet their needs and according to ttheir desires.
What about those in need of getting the minimal amount to cover their basic needs of food and water in order to meet their minimal biological requirements for good health.
To me it looks as if the main stake is to educate people to work out an equilibrium between demography and the environmental means to respond adequately to the needs of the people living in that environment. Meaning that demography growth should not overcome the ability of the environment to feed those living in it.
I understand this proposal is a compound and complex perspective but it is worth considering and put into practice. It is worth taking into consideration since some people are starving in areas of the globe where their main concern is to find food rather than to worry about what food to chose and where from it originates.
The subject may seem out of the realm of what you discuss, but shouldn’t we consider human beeings as part of the environment and should be salvaged as well?
Posted by: Monica Reinagel | Apr 23, 2008 11:45:51 AM
Samir,
good points and a valuable perspective that often gets overlooked in the "land of plenty." Thank you for your thoughts.
Posted by: Dave | Apr 23, 2008 3:50:58 PM
I would really like to see some science or numbers behind these claims that the world would be better if we ate less meat.
This seems to be all the rage, but I have not seen any studies on how this would work out.
The increase in demand for plant foods can only balance the reduction of animal ranching because of increases in fertilizer, pesticides, farm equipment, storage demands for fresh foods, etc.
Posted by: Scott | Jun 24, 2009 6:48:23 PM
I'm also trying to look into the Mhz relation to food. So far it looks like a quackwatch item. It claims that energy frequencies carry nutrients to our organs, so high mhz foods help us work more efficiently. Then they list very healthy foods that are supposedly high in the mhz scale and use that as evidence. The truth is out there.
