The Environmentalist’s Diet


Smile. The polar ice caps are melting, oil prices are at all time highs, droughts and wildfires are threatening our water and food supply, and the world population is poised to double within two generations. Smile. More than half of the original Amazon rainforest has been burned or cut down, temperatures over the past ten years have continually broken all records, and top scientists predict that if Global Warming trends persist 250 million people will soon be displaced and nearly half of the world’s species will be extinct.

So why smile? Because there is something that we can do about it, and we can begin right now. According to the United Nations Environmental Report: “Raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined”. So while driving less, reusing / recycling more, changing light bulbs, and planting trees are all important steps to take, they really don’t touch the cumulative effect that we will have when we make conscious food choices every time we shop. And while limiting (or eliminating) our consumption of meat and dairy are of utmost importance we will see that, from a purely environmental standpoint, a Vegetarian diet can be far worse than an Omnivore’s diet if done with no forethought.

There has always been three major reasons to go Vegetarian: namely the cruelty (animal rights) issue, the health issue, and the environmental issue. When I turned vegetarian twenty years ago I often found it frustrating that the issues of health and animal rights got all the press within the community, while the environmental implications of a meat based diet were barely mentioned. Friends of mine would often say “I like animals but I’m much more concerned about human suffering” or “I’ve switched to a high protein fish and chicken diet and I’ve never felt better”. The link between their own dietary health and the planet's health never even crossed their minds and it was difficult, if not impossible, to bridge the gap during a brief conversation. The strains that the new breed of factory farming placed upon our water and fuel supply was not well known and most people still assumed that the meat they bought was raised just as it had been for centuries.

The fact is, however, that as the middle class around the world flourished the demand for more hamburgers, chicken, and fish multiplied exponentially, creating a demand for meat and dairy products that the world has never known. Affluence seems to affect the palette as much as the pocketbook; since 1970 meat and dairy consumption in Asia has more than doubled. With the economic rise of the most populated countries on the planet, namely China & India, we are witnessing more animal consumption than ever before. This unprecedented thirst for all things western has created a devastating imbalance between humans and livestock. There are now 20 billion head of livestock on the planet (more than triple the number of humans), each of which needs to be fed, washed, transported, and more often than not - medicated. Factory farmed animals are pumped with eight times more antibiotics than humans. In the U.S. alone, beef production requires more water than we need to grow the nation’s entire fruit and vegetable crop. With numbers such as these it’s easy to see where our non-renewable resources are really going.

Changing perspectives

So if our intention is to heal an ailing planet we need to step back and think about our food from a different vantage point. Instead of simply a quick fix or a desire fulfilled, we must take a moment to think about where each meal started and how it then arrived on our plates.

Getting back to basics - we all must eat. In order to eat we all rely on three things: Land, Water, and Energy (generally oil). Now imagine using your own back yard, your own water, and your own labor and energy to grow all of the food that you will eat. You would then, of course, have to decide what exactly you wished to grow and in what amounts. If you decided to use your land to raise livestock for food you would be using about five times the amount of your precious resources than if you decided to subsist on fruits, vegetables, and grains. This is meant only as an example of a small garden for a single family, one that probably won’t need to use pesticides, medications, or refrigeration techniques to transport the food great distances. When we are speaking of a huge factory farm, however, one that literally needs to cram animals into tiny cages one on top of the other, and keep them free from disease at all costs, then we wind up using ten times the amount of fossil fuel for a meat based diet to produce the same amount of food calories as a vegetarian diet.

The Greenhouse effect

In addition to the land, water, and fuel costs there is the inescapable problem of global warming (greenhouse) gasses that livestock emit. The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomena that happens when some of the radiant heat from the sun is trapped in our atmosphere. If this didn’t occur then our world would be too cold for our survival. The problem, however, is that since the Industrial Revolution we have added so much more heat trapping gas to the atmosphere that living conditions on Earth may become unlivable. Most of the blame goes to Carbon Dioxide emissions since this is the gas that traps about 33% of the suns radiant heat and is the number one by product of our modern day car culture. Methane gas accounts for less than 2% of the total number of greenhouse gasses. What has not been widely discussed, however, is that Methane is capable of trapping 25 times more heat than Carbon Dioxide. Methane also breaks down in our atmosphere within ten years while Carbon Dioxide may linger for almost a hundred years. This tells us that by taking immediate steps to curb Methane emissions we will all have a much more direct affect on slowing the greenhouse effect and therefore Global warming within one generation.

So how do we reduce Methane emissions? By finding ways of redressing the natural balance of animal to human to plant life on Earth. Cows have become a valuable commodity and the task of fattening them up for slaughter requires factory farmers to feed them unnatural diets, limit their movement, and inject them with growth hormones. All of this contributes to excessive cow flatulence and studies have shown that a single cow produces about 550 liters of Methane each day. This may not take such a toll on our environment if the numbers weren’t so out of proportion. In the U.S. alone we slaughter more than 10 Billion land animals every year. At the moment animal agriculture accounts for 37% of our Methane and 65% of our Nitrous Oxide emissions while 70% of the former Amazon rainforest (our planets breathing source) is being used for pastureland. With all of this knowledge we would hope that trends would be reversing, just as many people are taking steps to drive Hybrid vehicles or use more efficient sources of energy, but this is not the case. Due to population growth and fast food lifestyles the world’s meat consumption is on course to double within the next fifty years.

Veganism is not always green

But as I noted earlier, a strict vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most environmentally friendly one. I’ve known many vegetarians who make the switch for purely ethical reasons and wind up living on conventional soy products and pasta for many years. When making a radical shift in our diets it may take time to find new foods that we really enjoy but while doing so it’s still important to understand how the food was grown.

For example there is a very popular, yet dangerous, farming method called monocropping. This is a relatively new growing technique whereby a huge farm cultivates only one crop with no variation, year after year. The main problem with monocropping is the increased use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers that ultimately ruin the topsoil and pollute the ground water. Corn, wheat, and soybeans are the main culprits when it comes to monocropping. Pesticides came about after WWII. Companies that produced toxins for the war needed a new outlet for their products and they found it by convincing farmers that chemicals like DDT would save their food from crop loss to bugs. Well we're now using 40 times more pesticide than we used in 1942, and the ones we are using are about 10 times as toxic — but the crop loss is greater than it was before we started using them at all.

Genetic Engineering

Since farmers who produce only one crop rely so heavily on that product for their survival they live in fear of a single bug or virus destroying their whole food supply and thereby putting them out of business. This fear initially led them to increased pesticide usage but more recently many have converted to Genetically Engineered (GE) seeds.

GE food is a complicated issue that would require a separate discussion to fully explore, but in my opinion there has not been enough testing to make it safe for the supermarket shelves. Furthermore, it’s been proven time and again that with crop rotation and modern farming methods we can grow all the food the world could ever need with no Genetically altered seeds at all, the problem on a wider scale has generally been in the distribution not the growing. With 75% of the corn in the U.S. now being grown with GE seeds we are allowing our children to be used as first generation guinea pigs for manufacturers of these products. There are very good reasons why most of Europe and Asia refuse to buy our Genetically Engineered corn and soy. Spend some time reading over the ingredients of most staple foods on the supermarket shelves. You may be surprised how many different types of food have corn or corn syrup in them. Corn has not only become the cheapest way to feed and fatten up this generation of kids but at least half of it is grown simply to feed and fatten up the cows that are destined to wind up as hamburgers.

The most remarkable part of GE food is that you’ll never know you’re eating it. Since there is no labeling requirement on packaged GE foods manufacturing giants like Monsanto can sell their seeds and chemical fertilizers to farmers with the assurance that if there is ever a health crisis they will bear no culpability. In a supposedly free society this practice of intentional secrecy goes against all the core values of our constitution. So even if we never completely rid the world of GE products we can all take steps to minimize their use and let politicians know, through emails and phone calls, that labeling is an important freedom of choice issue for everyone.

At the moment the only way to be sure that your food is not GE or drenched with pesticides is by either buying foods labeled organic or by buying straight from the farmer at your local farmers markets. Whenever you buy from a small local farm you are putting your money to good use by supporting an age old practice that is quickly being replaced by faceless corporations. In 1940 there were over 6 million family farms in the U.S., averaging 175 acres each, now less than 2% of the population produces food for the rest of us. When you buy directly from a farmer you are not only helping to keep small farms thriving but you are forming a relationship with the person who grows your food. You can find out exactly what was put on the food, when it was picked, or in most cases visit the farm yourself if you like. Most so-called Organic food that is grown in Asia is not what we would recognize as “Organic”. Many countries have much less stringent regulations than the organic food standards in the U.S. or Europe, so when you buy food from the other side of the world you never really know what you’re eating. Additionally, and probably most important, buying locally grown food means that your fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy did not have to be shipped thousands of miles just to get to you. This cuts out the need for costly packaging, pesticides, and unnecessary oil use (the second biggest environmental problem next to agriculture). When you are on the “100-mile diet”, as it is often called, the food will always be fresher (which also means more nutritious), better for the community, and more beneficial for the environment.

Obviously we can only do our best and not everyone can afford to buy all Organic or live year round on 100% locally grown food. But there are certain conventional (non-organic) provisions that cause most of the problems. Here’s a short list of the foods to avoid unless they are labeled as Organic, Certified Naturally Grown, or Locally low spray: Corn, Soy, Strawberries, Peaches, Peanuts, Cherries, Grapes, Celery, Bell pepper, and Nectarines.


One final thought

Living in a democratic society we pride ourselves on freedom of choice. We often use the word "freedom" to underscore the difference between our government and the despotic regimes of other nations that we label barbaric. For most Westerners, the freedom to choose what we eat and when we eat it is a prime example of the freedom that we hold dear. But we should remember that within the construct of our society we have the ability to pass laws that limit personal freedom when these actions have been proven to harm others. Some good examples are speed limits for drivers, gun laws for hunters, drug enforcement, and the recent cigarette laws that ban smoking in public places. Not very long ago it was considered a fundamental right to be able to smoke cigarettes wherever and whenever we wanted; as the saying goes: “If I want to wreck my own body then it’s no one else’s business”. But when it was scientifically proven that second hand smoke was injurious to non-smokers in the immediate area then the government stepped in and passed broad new laws that banned smoking in most public places.

At this moment it may seem unrealistic to limit anyone’s food choices. But when we examine the mounting evidence that every person’s diet has an immediate affect on the greater whole then we should question this basic assumption.
When we purchase a steak, a piece of veal, or even a non-organic strawberry we are initiating a domino effect, one that moves across continents and is felt by the entire eco-system. In essence, by laying down our money for food we are casting a vote for the type of world we’d like to live in and the type of world we’d like our children to live in; one where forests are viewed as archaic museum relics or one where the natural balance of human, animals, and plants are preserved to create a bounty for everyone.

No one really knows what the world will look like twenty years from now but the experts are certain of one thing: if each individual makes it a priority to tread lightly on the planet by limiting consumption of all kinds then nature will have a chance to heal the open wounds that were never even imaginable just one-hundred years ago.