Food for Thought

You are what you eat. That could be both delicious ánd smart.
And even if you wouldn’t choose yourself to be considered delicious, it’s still good if your food is. But making your food-choices sensible is no less desirable. Unfortunately, that’s not always as straightforward as it seems, though.

We all eat several meals a day. That makes the impact of food on both our own health and our surroundings quite substantial. An estimated 40% of people’s carbon footprint currently comes from food -it’s production and transport. That is quite a lot.
How can we make our sustenance more sustainable?

We all know by now reducing your intake of (red) meat and dairy helps reducing your diet’s impact on the environment. It doesn’t have to mean you have to go full vegan overnight. It already makes a difference if you simply check your portion sizes and eat no more than needed -many pre-formed burgers and steaks are about three times the size of what is considered a healthy daily intake of red meat.
Every meal where you do swap meat for nuts or pulses helps, even if you don’t do this every meal you eat. Swapping beef for chicken or fish already helps reducing your food’s carbon footprint.
And as an added bonus eating less meat will help you think of it as a luxury product. You’ll likely enjoy it more and will find it easier to pay that bit extra for meats from more sustainably raised farm animals, who will have had a better life than their industrially raised counterparts as well.

But what about your fruit and vegetables?
They are vital to a healthy diet; eating a wide range of them essential to obtain all necessary vitamins, minerals and fibres. But how do we choose the most environmentally friendly ones?

Instinctively, we feel we should eat fruit and veg that is grown seasonally and locally. But that’s a bit more complicated than it may sound at first.
We can’t all grow all our own food.
We don’t even all have access to a farmer’s market, a greengrocer, or zero-waste or eco-store that offers fresh local veg, much as we’d like to.
And even if we do, not all regions produce enough varied foods to make up a healthy diet each season.

Big supermarkets are not all bad. Their big scale does make them efficient at least. If you have to drive a long way to pick up some vegetables from a farmer, it just may be your impact is lower if you pick them up at your local supermarket.
You might be inclined to check the labels to find vegetables that are grown in the UK. It does make sense that something grown in your own country has a lower impact transport-wise.

But wait.

Did you know vegetables grown locally in heated greenhouses typically have a bigger carbon footprint than vegetables grown seasonally at the other side of the world and were transported by boat?

Yes, that does complicate things.

So, how do you choose?
Best to know what’s in season in your region and look for that first. To get a varied and nutrient rich diet, top it up with whatever is being shipped in, after having been grown seasonally in another climate zone. (Be aware of foods being flown in though, they’re the worst, environmentally speaking.)

Feeling you could use some help navigating your food choices?

You’re definitely not the only one.
That’s why we’re excited to be meeting Fork Ranger next week. And while we are wondering what that chat will bring us, you can head over to their website to read more blog posts on the topic, or to find recipes implementing sustainable choices.

Enjoy!

Update April 2023: We do now offer Fork Ranger products for sale!
And you can read an interview with the people behind Fork Ranger right here.