Ever wonder how much it matters to eat locally produced organic foods? From a climate change standpoint, turns out what you put on your plate matters a lot more than where it came from. Healthy eating for the planet means a lot of things, and one or the most important is avoiding lamb and beef (along with other red meats). This is partly because sheep and cows are not particularly efficient at converting the vegetable protein they eat into animal protein in their muscles (so you need a lot of grain to produce a little bit of lamb and beef). But another important factor is the fact that sheep and cows are ruminant mammals, which during food digestion produce large amounts of methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more potent than CO2.
Since dairy products also come from ruminants, they suffer the same methane emissions problem, though to a lesser degree which varies depending on the type of dairy product. Cheese looks a lot worse than yogurt and milk, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which fashioned the spiffy graph you see above.
A study out of Carnegie Mellon University compared eating local to eating less red meat, and concluded that “shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more greenhouse gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food.” Yes, that’s all locally sourced food, as in everything you eat (bananas and coffee included) comes from your friendly farmer down the road.
We point this out not because we don’t love the ethos behind local and organic as much as your average treehugger. There are still plenty of compelling reasons to eat local and organic, like reduced chemical pesticide and fertilizer use, building community, supporting your local farmers, and becoming more connected to your food. Organic farming does have climate benefits, which can come from eliminating chemical fertilizers (made from fossil fuels) and no-till cultivation techniques that enhance carbon storage in the soil. The Carnegie study also showed that eating local can have significant climate benefits, but since only 11% of the climate impact of food comes from transportation, there’s not a whole lot of room for improvement.
So you don’t have to become vegetarian overnight, but if you fancy yourself a mealtime climate warrior then cutting back on your red meat intake should rise high on your to-do list. You can join the “Meat Free Monday” movement, or (if you’re feeling a bit more ambitious) become a “Weekday Vegetarian.” Regardless of where you live, typing “vegetarian” into Yelp will find great options down the street, and that magical system of tubes called the Internet is also awash with advice and recipes for cutting down on meat without your taste-buds skipping a beat. If your taste buds are set in their ways, try to at least reduce your food waste, which can have a BIG impact in making your eating habits leaner and greener.
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[…] already blogged about how eating less red meat and cheese does more to reduce the environmental impacts of your diet than eati…. Turns out there’s an even easier way to green up your groceries: only buy what you’ll […]
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Fantastic news! Since I’ve been veggie for a good 16 years now, you can start shipping me some organic oranges whenever they’re in season, then. But where can I get more detailed info on whether it’s better to get them from California or Florida if I live somewhere in the middle?
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I suppose the only honest comment I can leave on this one is that I have forwarded this to both siblings and co-workers who have had this exact question in recent months.
(And now for some ridiculous homophony:) I’m hoping the question comes up again during the next office meating. In fact, if you guys would ever like to come in for a visit, I think everyone would like to meat you. I promise it won’t be murder, because murder is illegal, and if we did it, then we’d be on the lamb. And lamb is bad.
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Thank you! This needs to be publicized more.
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If you are going to eat animal products, try to get pasture-raised (or grass-fed) meat, dairy and eggs. Most of the calculations of climate impact are based on grain-fed animals, since most animal products in the US come from animals raised in feedlots on grain. When animals are raised on pasture, their meat, milk and eggs are much more nutritious (with more omega-3’s and CLA’s, the “good” kinds of fat), and at the same time the grassland can sequester much more carbon than a field of grain (or the soil of the feedlot) would. One study suggests that this carbon sequestration could offset as much as 94% of the carbon footprint of beef (http://www.bestfootforward.com/casestudy/national-trust/), making grass-fed meat a much more sustainable option.
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We have questions about biochar/charcoal. How many gallons of charcoal do I need to mix into the soil to offset the CO2 from burning one gallon of gasoline? And does the charcoal help any plants grow better?
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Great post on an important issue. We ran some numbers on this a while back at Brighter Planet to try to put some of these questions in perspective… here’s our report, if you’re interested: http://attachments.brighterplanet.com/press_items/local_copies/52/original/carbon_foodprint_wp.pdf?1271438613
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