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 >
Beef and its Environmental impact
I recently Calculated my Carbon footprint in the Carbon footprint calculator and what I found was really interesting. Each aspect of the categories where normal for my region, but when it came to food, it was very disproportionate. The reason being is my consumption of meat, and specifically beef. I eat a lot of beef and can never turn down a juicy steak, but this realization has helped me change in some ways.
Beef, as quoted from The Guardian Newspaper, 'requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions'. This fact is startling because is shows how much more costly it is to produce steak. It's scary to think that one pound of beef costs almost 1800 gallons of water as stated by the water footprint network.
Beef and other red meats are a huge contributor to GHG emissions. An oxford study concluded that meat rich diets, which are 100g or more a day, produce 7.2 kg of carbon emissions. Compared to Vegetarian and Vegan diets which are 3.8 and 2.9 respectively, meat is a pretty big e mitter of Carbon.
Im not urging people to become Vegetarian or Vegan but I am asking people to take the time to plan their diets better, and consume a little less meat than they did before.
I had this same dilemma and was not going to begin to be a full time vegetarian. Through research, although it doesn’t completely eliminate the use of 7.2 kg of carbon, I figured out that it is better to buy locally sourced beef which eliminates the CO2 emissions that are solicited by the transportation factor of beef production.
Aaron - I share your dilemma regarding the temptation of beef. While I know the production of beef is harmful to the environment, sometimes a nice beef hamburger can be really appealing. However, something that helps me avoid beef and other red meats is that according to One Green Planet "It takes more than nine times the fossil fuel to produce one calorie of meat than it does for one calorie of protein." This startling statistic reveals just how detrimental meat is to our planet. Personally, just thinking about the effects of global warming on our Earth can make me lose my appetite for beef. Additionally, it is much more satisfying to know you helped save the environment rather than contribute to its destruction after a meal.
Source: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsan … vironment/
I also have trouble turning down a nice steak quite often. However, with all the water necessary to produce even just an 8 ounce steak, we humans need to come up with alternatives. Not only do these cows require lots of water to be properly cared for, they also release huge amounts of methane into the environment, which is a greenhouse gas that the Earth cannot intake more of. According to multiple different sources, a couple alternatives to beef that are common are Tofu or a Veggie Burger made with beans. These are much more healthy to the environment and for our own health purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veggie_burger
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-foo … ie-steaks/