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 >
Earth's beef with beef; should you give it up?
Although food is necessary for our existence, it does not necessarily need to be the third of greenhouse gas emissions that it is today. It may seem like a lot, and it is a lot: from 9,800–16,900 megatonnes of CO2 in 2008, but it doesn’t have to be, and you won’t have to go vegan.A compilation of emissions data from different farms, done by the World Health Forum shows that Beef and Sheep allot for the most greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to other livestock and agriculture, mainly because of the Methane gas they release due to fermentation as part of their digestive process. One kilogram of beef has 26.61 kg GHG footprint and sheep 25.58 kg, compared to 5.77 for pork, 3.65 for chicken, 3.49 for fish, and 3.46 for eggs, not including everything less than that until the lowest, field-grown vegetables at 0.37 kg. So if one were to eat the same amount of pork, the emissions of the portion would decrease by 4 times, and pork is the 3rd highest. If we continue to the increasing fowl consumption in the US and decrease the beef and sheep consumption we would already be decreasing our national carbon footprint by a lot. If you still aren’t willing to give up that burger, opt for local, fresh meat that hasn’t been frozen and transported very far as both those factors increase a food’s carbon footprint.
Sources
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/ … nvironment
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/ … 411-130608
I DON'T THINK YOU SHOULD GIVE UP ON BEEF, YOU NEED MEAT FOR PROTEIN BUT ALSO BEEF CAN GIVE YOU PROTEIN BUT ALSO CAN CAUSE CANCER AND HAS MANY CHEMICALS. AND THEY ALSO TORTURE ANIMALS.
I think your point is valid, yet I am going to respectfully disagree. I think that in order to stay healthy, one needs protein and needs to balance their diet with fat and protein. Although the production of beef and pork consumption is large, I feel that we should focus more on the idea that these animals are being intoxicated with unhealthy and cancer causing toxins just to make the animal more "meaty." I think that we should find a way to balance our consumption but not complexly cut it out. Instead, I think we should cut back on the canned meat and fish, which are smothered in noxious toxins.