18 Dec Bringing the Climate Fight to Your Table

If you look at all the challenges facing food producers around the world, you could argue that the most daunting one is climate change. Higher temperatures, higher sea levels, crazy weather. Well, it turns out our food system isn't just challenged by climate change, it’s also one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gasses. Most of the GHGs come from the production end — methane from cattle, nitrous oxide from fertilizer, CO₂ from cutting down trees — but several recent studies have concluded that we will never be truly food-secure unless we change the way we eat. 

One of the biggest contributors to global warming is the food-supply system, from the fertilizer and gas used to cultivate farms to transportation and storage to what we throw away at the end of a meal. We won’t stop climate change through individual action alone, but together, we can make a real difference.

Here are four simple things we can do in changing the way we consume:

1. Eat less meat and dairy, especially beef and lamb. Livestock are by far the biggest producers of greenhouse gases in the global food system. In the U.S., most livestock-related emissions come from the animals’ digestive systems and from the fertilizer used to grow their feed. If an American family of four ate no meat or cheese one day a week, it would be like taking a car off the road for five weeks a year, according to estimates by the Environmental Working Group. If we all did it, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles. If you do want to eat meat or dairy, make sure it is grass-fed, or, pasture raised. If you go to Wholefoods, you should talk to the people behind the meat counter and ask for #5 meat. They usually have chicken and beef in this category.

2. Waste less food. Farmers have to grow far more food than we actually need because 40 percent of what they produce gets thrown away. That comes at a huge cost in greenhouse gases. Food waste in landfills also produces methane, which is 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. Try not to buy more than you can eat, and make creative use of your leftovers. Be aware of portion size and of falling into the trap of eating food just because it’s there. Buy food that’s less than perfect so the store won’t toss it out. It also helps if you compost your kitchen scraps. Another step would be to implement a rule that you have to eat what you put on your plate. I say this because I see us throwing away so much food because we decide we did not want it after all.

3. Use less energy: eat fresh, local, whole foods. Stores and restaurants generally don’t provide information about the energy used to produce, process and bring us our food, but we can make some guesses. Highly perishable, out-of-season produce often comes by airplane, one of the most fuel-hogging vehicles. Processed foods take a lot of energy to produce. And the energy we use to transport, store and prepare food also contributes a surprisingly large share of food’s greenhouse gas emissions. Make fewer car trips to the store — can you bike or walk? — and consider buying Energy Star appliances. And cover your pots when you cook. Cooking seasonal fresh foods take away the energy need for all the processing. Local foods remove the need for transportation.

4. Support sustainable food systems. Pound-for-pound, sustainably and locally produced foods may not always be the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases. But climate-friendly eating also means doing all we can to shore up our food system so it can withstand what climate change has in store for us. The best way to do that is by shifting toward more sustainable production methods and more efficient local and regional distribution systems. Buying from responsible producers in your area — and the restaurants and stores to which they sell — helps strengthen that system.

I sum this up to eating a mostly plant-based, local, seasonal, and preferably organic diet. Joining a CSA (community supported agriculture) is the best thing that happened to us to make this as easy as it gets. Take action today and look over this list form Edible Austin to find your local farm. There are a lot of options!

Side-effects include: nutrition and health! Plants are typically many times more loaded with nutrients, calcium, protein etc.etc. And it is delicious!

If you like to listen to a short radio interview: meet  Spike Gjerde, the chef of Woodberry Kitchen, which has received national praise for its seasonal, locally sourced food and Roni Neff, the research and policy director at the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an expert in the connection between climate change and diet. They both got a challenge: to shop for and prepare a festive, not-so-expensive, not-so-hard-to-make, climate-friendly meal. Follow their quest through Belvedere Market and Gjerde's new restaurant Artifact by listening to the audio above. Read Neff's steps for a climate-friendly diet here.