A Simplified Guide to Eating Eco (Without Going Veggie)
By Hannah Brookes
The food industry is complicated and frequently misunderstood. This makes it difficult for us, the consumers, to understand how to make the best choices for our planet. We all know (or should do by now) that one of the best and easiest ways to reduce our carbon footprint is to reduce our consumption of meat and dairy. However, I think that there are some simple, often overlooked, ways in which you can reduce your environmental impact without going veggie. Below I have tried to give a brief explanation of some things to research about the food you typically buy, and some other information to help you increase the sustainability of your diet.
Food Miles
Food miles is the term used to describe the distance that food is transported as it travels from producer to consumer, and the carbon footprint of a product as a result of this transportation. This includes transport from the producing country to the consumer country, distribution from the port to specific supermarkets and shops, and the journey from the supermarket to your fridge.
Most food packaging, or supermarket shelf labels, will tell you where the item you are buying has been grown or sourced. By looking out for this information, you can choose to buy food that has come from somewhere more local to you. Supermarkets and shops respond to consumer demand, so the more we buy local produce, the more the big companies will opt for locally grown produce.
Unfortunately, it is not just as simple as choosing produce that has been grown in your own country. The concept of tracking food miles, has been heavily criticised for being much too simplistic. Studies have shown that because of the way food is produced and stored, sometimes the carbon footprint of something that has been grown and then stored for 6 months in the UK, can actually have a bigger footprint than produce flown in from Africa that is ready to be consumed straight away without needing to be stored. Take green beans as an example. The green beans produced in Kenya are farmed in the traditional way. This means no unnatural fertilisers and no machinery, and the only downside is that they are flown to the UK. On the other hand, green beans grown in the UK don’t need to be flown across the world, however they require more energy to produce as our farming methods involve tractors, chemical fertilisers, plastic packaging, and energy greedy storage facilities so the produce remains fresh until it hits the shelves. Lower miles, more energy. So clearly focusing only on food miles of a product cannot be the solution. This leads me to the next point, on seasonal eating.
Seasonal Eating
Seasonal eating is pretty much what it sounds like – eating food when it is in season, as opposed to eating food all year round with no regard to when it is naturally grown and harvested. Eating strawberries in the middle of winter, for example, guarantees that they’ve either been in storage for a few months, or have been flown from the other side of the world where they are currently in season, neither of which is very environmentally friendly! Doing a bit of research around what fruits and vegetables grow in your country, and at what time of year, and then adjusting your shopping list to reflect these seasonal variations is a simple but impactful change to make.
Reducing Waste
Globally, we throw away around a third of food produced for human consumption. The average UK family wastes £470 each year on food which gets thrown away. Clearly this is a massive issue, but there are some simple things you can do to work towards a less wasteful future (whilst also helping your wallet).
- Plan your meals. By organising what you’re going to eat each week and just buying the things you need for those meals, you can avoid buying random ingredients that sit forgotten at the back of the fridge until they go off and have to be thrown out.
- Stop paying so much attention to use-by dates on foods and try to use your own judgement instead. With dairy and meat products these dates are more important, as it is harder to tell by eye or smell whether something has gone off. In general though, and especially with things like fruit and veg, these dates are arbitrary. How long a fruit or vegetable is going to last before it goes off is impossible to predict, especially when each household has different preferences when it comes to storage. To be safe (and to encourage you to buy more food than you actually need so they can make more money) supermarkets will always underestimate how long food actually lasts, and often food can be safely consumed weeks, if not months after its expiration date. If something is out of date but looks completely fine – it probably is completely fine. ‘Gone off’ fruit and veg can’t hurt you too much anyway, so if it tastes and looks fine, it is usually is fine.
- Educate yourself about what is dangerous to eat and should be thrown out, and what is okay. Rice and meat for example, are better safe than sorry when it comes to not being sure if it’s okay to eat or not. However, mould in jars of jam and pesto can be scraped off and they will still be fine. Fruits and veg with mushy bits can be cut out and the rest can still be eaten. Leftovers forgotten about and left out overnight are almost always fine to refrigerate in the morning. I find it sad how easily and quickly I’ve seen people throw perfectly good food away because they just don’t know that it’s still fine to eat. Educate yourself about what is, and isn’t, safe so you can make better decisions when it comes to throwing food away in the future.
- Be creative with food that’s on the edge. A brown or black banana can be grim to eat on it’s own, but still tastes great in a banana loaf or banana ice cream. Wilting leaves can be given new life by putting them in ice water. Squidgy vegetables can be made into delicious soups and stews.
To summarise, although the easiest way to cut down the carbon footprint of your diet is to go vegan, if you’re not prepared or able to do this there are other ways to become a more conscious consumer. In this post I’ve simplified what I think are the most important concepts. In reality most of the things I’ve mentioned are a lot more complicated and intertwined than they seem. I’ve also only touched on a few subjects, but there are many more ways in which to improve the sustainability of the way you eat, like buying unpackaged food, or avoiding palm oil. I’m not pretending to know everything about these topics, or saying that I’ve nailed sustainable eating, because it’s really complicated and difficult to understand – and I have definitely not nailed it! Working out the carbon footprint of your diet is incredibly hard, especially when there are so many different factors; where something is grown, how it is grown, how it is packaged, how it is transported, how it is stored… the list goes on! Having said that, by doing a bit of your own research and just generally trying to be more aware of the impact of your purchases, it is possible to make a difference, little by little, to move us towards a more sustainable world.