What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
Vegetarianism
Being a vegetarian not only helps the environment, but is healthy for your body as well. I am a vegetarian and always have been. According to http://www.chooseveg.com/environment, raising animals for food produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the cars, planes, and other forms of transportation combined. Also, raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and growing feed crops) now uses a staggering 30% of the Earth’s land mass. In the United States, 70% of the grain grown is fed to farmed animals. With that much food, we could feed so many people. To produce one pound of animal protein vs. one pound of soy protein, it takes about 12 times as much land, 13 times as much fossil fuel, and 15 times as much water. Even if you can't switch to being vegetarian, you can try to not eat as much meat. You could eat only one size portion of meat a day. Maybe you could even try to go a week with just eating fish. Try testing yourself out and seeing how long you can go without eating meat or fish.
Hi Raeshma in my opinion becoming a vegetarian is not a viable option because not many people would like to eat the same food everyday I mean it is a good idea but not as many people would support it
Thank you for your feedback. I would just like to inform you of something. Being a vegetarian doesn't necessarily mean you eat the same foods everyday. There are so many options out there. You could eat pizza, many different types of sandwiches, veggie burgers, pasta, noodles, tacos, different salads, different soups, rice, curry, and so many more. There are many different cuisines that do not have meat, and there many cuisines which do, but you can easily take out the meat and still have that meal. Obviously being vegetarian requires a lot more effort and not everyone has the time or capacity to do this. But people who do eat meat and are not willing to try being vegetarian could at least try to reduce the amount of meat they eat per day. This would definitely help.
Yeah I think reducing the amount of meat is a very good idea.