You And The Planet Are What You Eat

You and The Planet Are What You Eat

In Episode 210, we visited with Barent Roth of the Santa Monica based organization, Sustainable Works, where he teaches a green living workshop that covers lots of different ways to green up your life.

Our topic was the environmental impact of our food choices, really the intersection of health and environmental issues. We discussed how the very same diet that is responsible for most of the degenerative diseases in the west is also having a very destructive effect on our planet.

Your Ecological Stomp

The first thing to look at when analyzing your effect on the environment is your ecological footprint. This is a simple way of looking at what you do on a daily basis and how much energy, waste and broken hearts you leave in your wake. This is done by looking at 4 main areas:

Food
Transportation
Shelter
Consumption of Goods

As it turns out food and transportation account for almost half of the environmental web we weave. Here's a nice pretty pie chart that demonstrates this idea and this is what it looks like for most Americans:


Food accounts for about 23% of our impact and can then be broken down further and it looks about like this:

Grocery: 7.6%
Red meat 7%
Fish and Poultry 2.3%
Dairy 1.9%
Restaurant 4.2%

Impact of Meat Alone

So far so good. Now let's take a look at what meat, itself, does to our environment:

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations.


In 1961 the world's total meat supply was 71 tons. n 2007 it was estimated to be 284 tons. ( Per capita consumption has more than doubled over this period). World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050.

Americans eat about 8oz. of meat per day, roughly twice the global average. As about 5% of the world's population, we grow and kill nearly 10 million animals a year, more than 15% of the world's total.

Amount of Planet Used For Agriculture

An estimated 30% of the earth's ice free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production. Farming generates nearly 1/5 of the world's greenhouse gases - more than transportation.

 

Red Meat Is Simply A Fossil Fuel Machine

According to Micheal Pollan, in a NY Times magazine story entitled "This Steer's Life" in 2002, about a steer named No. 534, when you factor all the herbicides and fertilizer, transportation, and other petroleum based chemicals, No. 534 consumed roughly 284 gallons of oil (6.7 barrels)in its lifetime.


35 million cows are killed in US annually. Thats roughly 234.5 million barrels of oil at $92.06 per barrel (last I checked) = $21.6 billion dollars in oil consumed annually by the nations cows. In 1997 The total average amount spent on petroleum products per farm was $14, 199. There were estimated 1,911,859 U.S. farms, meaning an estimated 27 billion was spent on petroleum products.

In one of the most succinct and memorable quotes of our time he wrote:

"We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar powered ruminant into the very last thing we need; another fossil fuel machine."

The Cost In Water

Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation’s entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins estimates that “you’d save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year.”

Your choice, have that steak or don't shower for 6 months.

Americans Are Meating Themselves to Death

Unless you have been living in a meat lined cave for the last 20 years you have heard that the wisdom of folks like Dr. Atkins has lead us down a path of misery. The heavily meat based diet of the average American is a recipe for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and a laundry list of other diseases that you should not wish on even the most hated of prisoners at Gitmo.

Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year. An increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago.

We each consume around 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal governments recommended allowance. Of that about 75 grams comes from animal protein. We would do just fine on 30 grams a day of protein, virtually all of it from planet sources. And we would see our health improve immensely.

Let's see, good for our health and good for the planet. Seems like a no brainer.

You Don't Have to Give Up Meat

I can hear all you meat lovers out there huffing and puffing and planning your next invasion, but hold the phone! No one is saying you have to give up meat entirely. If you wish to become a vegetarian for health or ethical reasons that's wonderful, but if you are someone who feels they can't do without steak, that's also OK. As Barent pointed out, we really need to get away from this all or nothing mentality. Be a vegan or vegetarian if you want to, but you don't have to. What you do have to do is consider the impact that your dietary choices have.

If Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20% it would be the same effect as if we all switched to driving the super efficient Prius. I, personally, advocate a 10 to 15% meat diet for those who want to continue to eat meat. If you eat 90 meals a month, that means you eat 9 to 13.5 meals with meat and the rest vegetarian.

The Positive Impact on Both Your Health and The Planet's

From a health standpoint this would dramatically reduce incidence of cancer, heart disease, hypertension, auto-immune disorders, obesity, etc. In addition, if we all chose to eat organic meat in those meals (which you could now afford from the money you save eating this way), we would radically transform the entire planet. We can do it people, and the place to start is with yourself. We are passed the time of protests, its time for each one of us to act. This one action can have amazingly positive global repercussions.

Here's some great links for getting more info on these and other related issues:

For evaluating your ecological footprint: www.ecofoot.org

For changing your diet: www.coolyourdiet.org, www.meatoutmondays.org

Isn't it nice to know that we really do have solutions? They are right here in front of us, at the end of our forks.

That's all I got. Peace, love and vegetables (and fruit),

Marc