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27 Organizations in New York City Combating Food Waste

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27 Organizations in New York City Combating Food Waste

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27 Organizations in New York City Combating Food Waste

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27 organizations in New York focusing on food loss and food waste in preparation for the Food Tank Summit on October 3.

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There are proven solutions to address food waste. 

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There are proven solutions to address food waste. 

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(Go to minute 3:55 for climate change and farts)

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Ask Tai Why: Freckles, video games, and climate-changing farts

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In bonus segment Ask Tai Why, Tai answers some questions for a change. This week, he takes questions from: Grace, Hamilton: Why do I have freckles Henry: Why are Video Games so violent? Alex, Halifax: Are farts changing the climate?

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Sustainable Living E1 | Food: Local, Organic, Unpackaged, Food Waste

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Sustainable Living E1 | Food: Local, Organic, Unpackaged, Food Waste

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Sustainable Living E1 | Food: Local, Organic, Unpackaged, Food Waste

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The Basics: Food Waste Problems and Solutions

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The Basics: Food Waste Problems and Solutions

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Source: World Wildlife Fund

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How This Indigenous Farmer Is Solving Food Insecurity

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How This Indigenous Farmer Is Solving Food Insecurity

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How This Indigenous Farmer Is Solving Food Insecurity

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Cornwall's Climate Stories: Food for Thought

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Cornwall's Climate Stories: Food for Thought

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Cornwall's Climate Stories: Food for Thought

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0:00 / 2:09•Watch full video

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Honeyland [Official Trailer] – In Theaters July 26, 2019

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Down to Earth with Zac Efron. Season 2. (on Netflix) 

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Down to Earth with Zac Efron. Season 2. (on Netflix) 

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The Effect Food Production has on Climate Change

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The Effect Food Production has on Climate Change

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The Effect Food Production has on Climate Change

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Become an expert. 🤓 Read and learn as much as you can. 📚

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Become an expert. 🤓 Read and learn as much as you can. 📚

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👑 Pro-tip: Start with the easiest texts first. 📈

🟩 = easiest

🟨 = medium

🟥 = hardest, most complex

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Kids Go Green: Waste Less | PBS LearningMedia

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Kids Go Green: Waste Less | PBS LearningMedia

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Kids Go Green: Waste Less | PBS LearningMedia

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Learn about kids who are helping the environment by reducing waste in their school. This Cyberchase-presented video features P.S. 110's Green Team who is helping their school recycle and compost more. P.S.

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The production of food has hidden costs. 

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The production of food has hidden costs. 

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Food waste contributes to climate change. 

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Food waste contributes to climate change. 

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Lesson created by Video from TED-Ed Curriculum Team using TED-Ed's TED-Ed YouTube channel lesson creator

Let's Begin...

About 10,000 years ago, humans began to farm. This agricultural revolution was a turning point in our history and enabled the existence of civilization. Today, nearly 40% of our planet is farmland. Spread all over the world, these lands are the pieces to a global puzzle we're all facing: in the future, how can we feed every member of a growing population a healthy diet? Brent Loken investigates.

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Can we create the "perfect" farm? - Brent Loken

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About 10,000 years ago, humans began to farm. This agricultural revolution was a turning point in our history and enabled the existence of civilization. Today, nearly 40% of our planet is farmland. Spread all over the world, these lands are the pieces to a global puzzle we're all facing: in the future, how can we feed every member of a growing population a healthy diet?

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What would happen if everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow?

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What would happen if everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow?

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Let's Begin...

Imagine if a wizard of meatless dining suddenly appeared on Earth and with one wave of a wand wiped away all meat from our shelves- along with any desire to eat it. Farm animals destined for food vanish, whisked away to another planet. What happens in the following days, years, and even millennia? Carolyn Beans explores what a vegetarian world could look like.

Create and share a new lesson based on this one.

About TED-Ed Animations

TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here "

Meet The Creators

Educator Carolyn Beans

Director Mitchelle Tamariz

Narrator Pen-Pen Chen

Music Salil Bhayani, cAMP Studio

Sound Designer Nirana Singh, cAMP Studio

Director of Production Gerta Xhelo

Producer Sazia Afrin

Editorial Director Alex Rosenthal

Editorial Producer Shannon Odell

Expert Consultant Marco Springmann

See more creators

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What would happen if everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow? - Carolyn Beans

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Imagine if a wizard of meatless dining suddenly appeared on Earth and with one wave of a wand wiped away all meat from our shelves- along with any desire to eat it. Farm animals destined for food vanish, whisked away to another planet. What happens in the following days, years, and even millennia?

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Let's Begin...

Countries around the world waste huge amounts of food every year: roughly a fifth of food items in the US are tossed because consumers aren't sure how to interpret expiration labels. But most groceries are still perfectly safe to eat past their expiration dates. If the dates on our food don't tell us that something's gone bad, what do they tell us? Carolyn Beans shares how to prevent food waste.

Create and share a new lesson based on this one.

About TED-Ed Animations

TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here "

Meet The Creators

Educator Carolyn Beans

Director Anton Bogaty

Narrator Alexandra Panzer

Music Salil Bhayani, cAMP Studio

Sound Designer Chengqing Zhu, cAMP Studio

Director of Production Gerta Xhelo

Producer Sazia Afrin

Editorial Director Alex Rosenthal

Editorial Producer Dan Kwartler

Script Editor Carolyn Beans

Fact-Checker Charles Wallace

See more creators

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Food expiration dates don't mean what you think - Carolyn Beans

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Countries around the world waste huge amounts of food every year: roughly a fifth of food items in the US are tossed because consumers aren't sure how to interpret expiration labels. But most groceries are still perfectly safe to eat past their expiration dates.

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The diet that helps fight climate change

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The diet that helps fight climate change

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The diet that helps fight climate change

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Food Waste Is The World's Dumbest Problem

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Food Waste Is The World's Dumbest Problem

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Vox | 2017

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Food waste is the world's dumbest problem

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What if everyone in the world went vegan? | 

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What if everyone in the world went vegan? | 

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Ted-Ed

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Head back to the Quest to finish our lesson, or continue exploring these videos to learn about the important role bees play in producing our food, how to reduce food waste, and how to choose a more Earth-friendly diet:

Watch 1: Pollination: Trading food for fertilization in 3 minutes (Cornell University)
Watch 2: The Hidden Beauty of Pollination (TED)
Watch 3: We Waste One Third of Our Food Worldwide (National Geographic)
LEARN + INTERACT
Play National Geographic's Planet Food game to discover the global footprint of your food (and go on a chocolate bar journey!) (for all ages)

Dissect a flower and learn about pollination watch this simple tutorial on pollination Pollination of Flowers and then complete the Flower Dissection Activity Booklet; Bees & Our Food Activity Booklet with Alvéole (see the activity guides in the educator section below) (for all ages)

Explore interactive resources on how to make food systems more Earth-friendly with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Food Initiative (for ages 11+)
ACT + SHARE
Build and share a "crazy plant"! Collect fruit, vegetables, spices, and treats and put them together to invent a crazy plant with all of the necessary plant parts represented (a potato-apple-cereal plant! A cookie-lettuce-banana plant!) Think about what part of the plant the food comes from: celery (stem), carrot (root), apple (seed), broccoli (flowers), cinnamon (bark) etc. Take a photo of your plant and sharing it online with #EarthSchool (for ages 5-10)

Invent a plan for your family to reduce food waste. Check out this teacher's experience to get some inspiration and then tell us about your ideas for the "Food-Waste Warrior" campaign by posting with #EarthSchool (for ages 11+)

Play with your food! The World Wildlife Fund's Picnic Basket list is full of food activities, conversation starters, and recipes for children at home (for ages 5-10)

Grow your own food from veggie scraps (for all ages)
WANT MORE?
Watch: Learn more about the journey our food travels by watching these two short videos: The Industrial Tomato and The Local Tomato (for all ages)

Read: Get your mouth watering with National Geographic's Food: An Encyclopedia slideshow (for all ages)

Participate: Ellen MacArthur Foundation Food Initiative (for ages 11+)

Resources for Parents and Educators: Flower Dissection Activity Guide; Bees & Our Food Guide with Alvéole; Food and Carbon Part 2 Teaching Guide with Nature Conservancy

This Earth School Quest was created by the following incredible educators and environmental experts: Kathleen Usher PhD

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What if everyone in the world went vegan?

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More and more people are eating vegan foods and living a vegan lifestyle. But what would happen if everyone in the world switched to a plant-based diet and cut out meat and dairy? After the video, continue onto other sections to learn more, interact, act and share.

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What On Earth? Episode 5: Food for thought

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What On Earth? Episode 5: Food for thought

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Hey Jen, can you believe we only got a couple weeks left in the semester Thanksgiving break is actually just a couple days away, and I can't believe it.

Jennifer Ng 0:09

Even though this holiday season will be different due to COVID. At least the food will be a familiar comfort. I'm definitely looking forward to mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.

Molly Lowney 0:18

Which brings us to today's topic. As we gear up to start preparations for our various holiday feasts, we thought what better time to talk in depth about food, climate change in the pandemic than now?

Jennifer Ng 0:31

Because we're sure you've been encouraged to eat less meat and buy organic produce, but what impact do those changes really make?

Molly Lowney 0:38

We're addressing all of that on today's episode, coming right up.

Jennifer Ng 0:50

You're listening to What on Earth? a podcast from the beacon. I'm Jennifer. And I'm Molly.

Molly Lowney 0:55

And this is a podcast where we look at climate change and environmental issues through the lens of current events.

Jennifer Ng 1:02

We're here with Dr. Carpenter from the Environmental Studies Department. Hi, welcome. Would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 1:12

I'm Dr. Carpenter, I, I'm in Environmental Studies Department, I teach core science is mainly my job. And I'm obsessed with food issues. So that's my quick background.

Jennifer Ng 1:29

Great, awesome.

Molly Lowney 1:29

So today we're talking all about food, especially like moving into like the holiday season where like big comfort meals are a huge thing that suddenly become a part of people's lives again. So I feel like there's a lot of numbers that get tossed around when it comes to agriculture, the agriculture industry and climate change. So how much does agriculture really contribute to overall emissions?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 1:56

So the reason why there's lots of different numbers is because it depends on how you calculate it because Are you talking about just the animals? Are you talking about the soil impact? Are you talking about the tractors? So that all is pretty obvious, right? But then you start adding - are you talking about the trees that you cut down to grow that stuff? So the land use change? And then you start adding how about the trucks and the trains? And the planes and the ships that transport the food everywhere? How about the energy for refrigeration? How about the energy that goes into making the plastics? How about the energy that goes into mining the oil? How about the you know, so it sort of depends on where you draw your line. And it's a pretty squishy line.

So it's really hard, but most people are very comfortable with the 20 to 25% of emissions are caused by agriculture, you'll hear is it Food Inc., there's a documentary that everybody always cuts and he's like, 50%. And I'm like, okay, you use squinched really far this way, you know, some foods, you're gonna be like, okay, that is packaged like crazy and refrigerated and processed in tons of energy. So we're going to give it a little more energy to it. So I bet you could say, if you look at the whole process, it's closer to 30%.

Jennifer Ng 3:13

Is that 20 to 30%? globally, or just for the US?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 3:17

Global anthropogenic greenhouse gases come from agriculture. Most people go in the low 20s, the more sciency ones,

Jennifer Ng 3:26

how are we keeping track of all of that, I guess, like, trying to factor in everything from production to growing and transportation? And how is all of that aggregated by people? Who does all that aggregating?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 3:42

It is not done intentionally, it is done post by people who are curious about it. So we do not track this stuff. The government is not out making sure we're not doing too much. Okay. So we it's more people with models, okay, we look at this, and we know these numbers, because we know how much oil is brought in and how much coal is being burnt. So then we can, you know, it's not that, you know, you do calculations and you make guess-timations, which is why the number is fudgy, which is why you're gonna see It's 18%. It's 23%. No, it's 30%. That's where you're gonna get a lot of different numbers is because none of it's based on real world data. It's based on models with some real world data. Does that make sense? So it's not, there's not a real tracking, it's a lot of posts, you know, going hey, you know, if we actually calculate how much that does, and we add that to how much that does, that adds up to a lot.

Or we have science that says how much each cow tends to burp, right? Yeah. So now even that has a huge amount of variability depends on what you feed them. It depends on the health of the cow, the breed of the cow. Um, non Western cows burp a whole lot less. Like they produce less methane. So, you know, it can tell them so many factors, which is why it gets kind of squishy. But that's kind of how science works for some things that we don't fully fully have the ability to just measure directly. You do lots of people doing different ways of looking at it and trying to calculate it. And if they all tend to agree, you're like, okay, that might actually be true.

Molly Lowney 5:23

I just have kind of a follow up question. So like, with that, like understanding and foundation, would you say that diet and food, and like changing habits around those does this makes a significant impact on emissions or contributions to climate change?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 5:39

So one of the things that's interesting, there's, as you guys know, about the big debate between Do you do personal changes? Or do you do political changes and all this stuff? I'm just gonna give you my standpoint on this, I think the personal changes are crucial to get people fired up to change the politics. So I think you need to change yourself before because the politicians like you want that, but you still buy the crap so why should I listen to you? So you need to change yourself and get enough people around you to change, which then provides the pressure that the politics needs to make a real change. So that's where I happen to stand, which I've heard lots of arguments that also disagree with me that have merit to so there's, this is a challenging topic.

But what I say about food is that it's the easiest to change. Now, it's really hard because culture says things about food. And I, I will say I tend to be like respect your grandmother, eat what she gives you and then when you go home, feed yourself, your vegan meals if you want. I mean, I really think that food, one, is really easy to change. And there's, of course, ways to do it with lots of money. But there's also, you know, a lot of the vegetarians in this world, are budget economic vegetarians who can't afford to eat meat, and so obviously, you know, being vegetarian, you don't have to be rich to be vegetarian. Um, well, unless you live in a place that the only thing you produce is meat, which is a lot of the world, but ignoring that.

So I think it's something you can do personally, I think it's something that you can actually influence your family and friends, not by making them not by preaching at them necessarily, but by cooking them good food, or sharing the joy of the yummy vegetarian food that you have, or the local meat, if you're a meat eater, you know, like, oh, my goodness, going local, tastes better. Like there's certain things where it's way better for the environment, and it tastes that much better. It's kind of amazing.

And if you can have, if you have a big enough group of friends, you can start to get a little political group there. So just feeding people is a great way to sort of convince them it's worth eating this yummy stuff. I do think, like, you changing your diet does not fix the world. Okay, you've given up that hamburger that you so dearly love will not have the life changing world changing impact that you know, would make it really worth it. But if you eat less hamburgers, and you convince your friends to eat less hamburgers, and then your friends start voting in ways that make it so that, you know, we're not just subsidizing all the beef production like crazy, that does have an impact.

Jennifer Ng 8:05

Pretty key to being able to, like start eating less meat and eating local is like having that access. But that's not always super available to people. So what would you say to encourage people who don't have as like access to, like fresh produce?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 8:26

And this is a really hard one because you'll see, rightly people complaining that the vegan movement or even the vegetarian movement is an elitist, white, racist, you know, like movement, like you'll hear that. I think a lot of this is about education, the amazing impact of putting a community garden in like okay, so Detroit is a great example, like Detroit is, you know, taking like a lot of the buildings are going you know, like the whole economy and like buildings are falling apart. So there are groups, community groups that are just, you know, taking the empty lots and turning them into community gardens.

And this is amazing because it builds community, you can have teaching things there because, you know, I had an interesting thing you donate fava beans to the food bank and not most food banks won't accept it. Why? Because people don't know how to cook fava beans. Right? So good food banks will actually have like educational things where here's how we're going to have a night on how you cook different kinds of beans so when you get them in your food bank supply, you can actually cook them and anybody, you in your dorm room or your, you know, your apartment can grow basil on your you know, on your window sill, and that isn't all the food you need, but you know what, you can make your own pesto. You can grow certain amounts of things in any circumstances. Even the basement horrible stinky apartments you can you can get a grow light like they're all over the place. Okay.

The community groups to do the community gardens is one that's been really successful in some very poor inner city neighborhoods. So I think there's some really interesting ways that we can make these things more accessible through community building, which has its own benefits, right, as well as education. So I think that's the big thing. Yes, it can be hard to get accessibility to people. But a lot of the hardness is imposed on us, and we can fight back from it. Um, I lived in a really horrible apartment complex in grad school, and I lined my little driveway with it. And like the administration of the apartment complex, hated it. But I wasn't breaking the rules, and everybody else in the complex loved it, you know, and so there are ways to get around the real issue that it is hard to access these glorious organic foods if you don't have money. Um, there are ways around it - it takes education and community building,

Molly Lowney 10:51

I think, kind of shifting to like food issues and how it intersects with like, what's going on today. Can you talk a little bit about how the pandemic has impacted our food systems, and even agriculture,?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 11:05

The pandemic has had a huge huge impact, um, and what it really has done as it has exposed the flaws in our system. So most of us remember the grocery stores that were all empty, and you know, you had people lining up for food banks like crazy. Um, and what was really interesting is back in May, when that was happening, where you had empty grocery stores and empty food banks, farmers were throwing away food, okay, and they were throwing away a lot of food. Because our system doesn't have any resiliency in it.

Basically, a farmer will contract with a grocery store, or contract with the restaurant, right? And if you're a small farmer, like the big farmers have the big supply chains, and all that stuff, but the small farmers that produce most of the good food, the vegetables, all that yummy stuff, you're really lucky if you contract with like three restaurants in town, you are golden, you have your farm set up then. But when all the restaurants closed, those farmers had food that was ripe. And they don't know where to take it. And if they pick it and try and donate it, it costs them money to pick it. Right, you have to pay your workers, you have to pay for the gas to transport it to pay for the boxes to put it in. Um, and so then if you're donating that there's no you're not getting that money back. And so farmers that are barely making it anyways, because farming is really economically challenging to do, especially on a smaller scale, they can't afford to donate it. So the thing that they can do is they can just let it rot, compost it, try and get some good soil out of it.

And so what we had is this horribly sad situation where there was no food in the grocery stores, there was no food going to, you know, food banks with all these people that were needing more and more of it, because of course, they had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and food rotting on the farms. You know, we could have- How much do I go political here, um, it would have been nice to see a federal government response of creating transportation of food. So okay, we're gonna create hubs, we're gonna go, we're gonna contact the small farms that no longer have a place to sell their stuff, and we're going to buy your food, and we're going to take it here, all of this stuff, but um, that didn't happen.

And so then those farmers, like the pandemic hasn't ended, right, grocery stores are filled up, we smoothed out our big food chain and stuff, and we're probably fine there. But those small farms, restaurants aren't back online, right? They sort of were but like quarter capacity, and now we're shutting them down again, because COVID is getting worse. So those farms are toast. We really are expecting a good third of the small farms, and by small, you know, small is hard to define because it depends on what you're growing. But 50 acres or less, when you're talking vegetables, it's often in the one to five acres, maybe 10. If you're in talking animals, you're talking 50, you know, 20 to 50 acres, but, um, these small farms are just going to fold because they've lost their income and they don't have that buffer. They don't have an economic buffer because farming is such a challenging profession as it is.

You also have the effect on the people producing the food, yes? So what's been really interesting, we've said food workers are you know, what's, oh, I just forgotten the word but the crucial workers, what's the essential, essential, there we go. That's the essential workers thing. And they are because we all need to eat, but there wasn't any standardization of protection for them. So literally, there were, you know, nonprofit groups that were just going around giving people masks because the, you know, the farms weren't providing masks for the workers who are picking the food, so they're really risking their lives just to pick us food.

Um, yes, yes, yes, they're outdoors. But if you've ever seen people having to pick food, they're working hard, they're breathing hard, they're close proximity, they're breathing on each other, I don't care if it's windy, they're breathing on each other. Then you got into the processing plants were some of the biggest, you know, we had our first outbreaks were in like the the senior homes, but then the next big outbreaks were in meat processing plants. And the whole idea was is your bacon killing somebody? And arguably, yes, meat processing plants. Again, your people are crammed close together, they're working very fast and very hard with low breaks, you know, very few breaks. And they're breathing on each other.

And they have safety protocols for like E. coli, and other bacteria. But those don't work for viruses. Um, so the people were getting sick from that. And often, people in the meat processing plants, we've had a long history in our country, a meat processing plants, having immigrant families in them. And so then often the immigrant families are living in larger family groups. And so then they expose, and it spreads really, really quickly that way. And so we had a huge impact from processing our food.

And then the meat plants started putting some protocols, which a lot of them had the excuse, well, we follow the protocols that we were told, will yeah because the government didn't give them good protocols. Right. Um, and I happen to think that you could have read any basic news on COVID and said, Oh, these aren't good enough protocols. But you know, there's, there's that there wasn't a message, you know, said that, okay, all processing plants, here's what you need to update to protect from COVID.

Um, later in the summer, we then had fruit processing plants. So I'm here in Vancouver, Washington, like a mile from my house, there was a huge outbreak with like, 60 people or something, catching COVID, which is another doesn't sound like a huge amount, but it's a little tiny factory. I think they have 150 people working there, you know, so food production is also a great way because it since it's so necessary, and since we have a long history of paying people very badly, and taking care of people very little, who produce our food. Um, those people are massively at risk for getting COVID. And so it's kind of both farms are crashing, but also the people who are producing our food are not being well protected. And so COVID is having a huge gotcha, gotcha, gotcha kind of moment. See, you're not, if this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this doesn't work.

Jennifer Ng 17:31

With all of that, like, all the farms failing, and it's being it's become really clear that our workers are treated super poorly in the agriculture industry. How would we go about supporting a more equitable and environmentally friendly food system?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 17:49

So this is this gets back to the economic thing, if you come from an upper middle class family, buy organic by local, no question. It's more expensive. But if you can participate in the local system, if you can shop at farmer's markets, you can look your farmer in the eye and ask them some questions. You know, I really, really am a big one about buying local, there are skeez-bags locally. No question. But the biggest, most exploitative, problematic sort of agricultural systems are all about trade, not about feeding the local region. So it's just, you know, you're in the Midwest in the Corn Belt, and it's hard, you don't buy corn from there. You know, like you don't go to the grocery store and get corn from Iowa, if you live in Iowa, like it's shipped from someplace else.

Um, and so if you can avoid those systems that are the big efficiency, efficiency, efficiency systems, and efficiency often means that the subtleties are lost, which, you know, human health is maybe a subtlety to some of these people. Anytime you can break out of the system, the big commodity food system, you're going to be able to help that. And that might involve growing your own food, that might involve eating local, um, it can be hard to do, but there are, you know, you have to do your shopping around there are CSAs. Do you know what a CSA is? So a CSA is community supported agriculture. It's usually like a farm, who will you get a box a week, and many of those are expensive, but some of those are quite cheap, the cheapness often comes because you don't get to choose what you get. So you have to kind of take what it is which means some adventures in the kitchen, right? And again, if you are a single parent with a minimum wage job, this is gonna be hard.

If I had all the answers for this, it would be great. I don't, but I think if you have the power to go local, you should do it. Depending on where you live, this also can be harder. Arizona local is a little a little bit harder than Portland local, because Portland has amazing food locally. But even even in Arizona, there are things that are local, like the chilies that you can grow in Arizona that are way better than the chilies you grow other places, like it's worth it. So anytime you can do that, I think that is just a personally easily accessible way. We try and step away from commodity step away from processed in grocery. And the benefit is that you get healthier food. And it tastes better too. But you have to learn how to cook.

Molly Lowney 20:27

I think kind of a follow up question to that. I mean, like in the next month and a half people are going to be sitting down and having large meals with family members, I think how would you, like encourage people or give advice to like start conversations about like food equity and sustainability like with their, like extended family?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 20:49

Yeah, having these conversations with family is really, really hard because you don't want to make them mad for either because you don't want to or because you have consequences, right? You don't want to make them mad. Um, so I'll give you my take, which there are lots of different ways to do this. But my take is to feed them gloriousness that is, you know, the good stuff. But I like to cook so this is a little questionable.

But, you know, get a local turkey or this year, I happen to grow my own turkeys. This is my first year doing it. It was way more fun than I thought like turkeys are a ton of fun to have around. And so I grew my own turkey, so we're gonna have the turkeys. And one of the things like so if you go to the grocery store, some of the fancier grocery stores will have local turkeys, they are twice as expensive. So you have to get a way smaller turkey. But if you now, I'm sort of ignoring that we're all going to be zooming with our family for Thanksgiving for the moment. Okay, so I'm not ignoring that, but I know that exists. But if you can get a smaller turkey, and it tastes so good, and then you just have more sides you can kind of like see this is worth it family, it can be really spectacular.

I'm a big one about don't judge, just share. Um, so like, if your family you're going to do the zoom Thanksgiving or we're going to have grandma and grandpa on one zoom screen and you know, I got you know, my sister and her kids on that screen and this is me. You know, do you send everybody like if you have the money do you send everybody a certificate for a non butterball turkey, you know, for like good turkey? Or, you know, play some game like that, or do you send everybody like organic squash to make their pie? I don't know what it is. But can you, you know, do it in a way that's about the joy because I haven't Okay, so Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but Thanksgiving.

So Thanksgiving has a history that is really really sketchy and questionable, but if we ignore all that historical baggage, and we just look at what we see Thanksgiving us today, it's a time to get together with family and eat glorious food. And I personally love that. Like, I am not some austere Let's all eat you know seaweed and tofu and that's it. Although tofu has a huge carbon footprint, it's a terrible example but um, I love food. So like Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite favorite holiday. Um, and I don't believe that you should push back and say, Oh, you gluttons, You're horrible. I say you should love like, fill yourself with love and food. And that is okay. As long as you're not doing that every single day like well, the love I think you should every day but you know the food every single day. But just try and make it better. How much can we go local? How much can we go organic or semi organic? You know, some local farm that may not be certified? How much can we get? Even if all we got is a brussel sprouts that were local? Like, can we do that? Um, I think just don't push back on the joy of the season. Kind of use the joy? Oh, look, I found a way to get us all to have these wonderful turkeys that are so much better. Um, and use that joy and if you happen to convince like grandma had always been suspicious and she's actually like, Whoa, this is actually really good. Maybe you've won, you know, like, so I think that's how I use the joy. I'm just gonna say that use the joy and sharing instead of lecturing and angst.

Molly Lowney 24:27

Do you have like one or two favorite Thanksgiving recipes that you would be able to share with students that might be easy for college students to make?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 24:37

So my hands down favorite my grandmother makes us and it is to die for is candied yams but not the kind that most people are used to. So we're not talking to like whipped up with marshmallows on top. So what my grandmother does is she bakes a yam 350 for you know, an hour till it's like soft but not the like squishy, squishy squishy, so like you can slice it. Okay, so think, you know, just like cooked adente? Was that really, but you know, not. So the reason I'm making the point of this is because when I cook a yam which they actually sweet potatoes, the orange ones. But when I cook one of those just to eat, I cook it until the sugar crystallizes as it pours out of it, like that's how I cook it. And that doesn't work for this. So you cook them so you can slice them, you let them cool, you peel them and you slice them and you lay them out on a cookie sheet or a glass baking dish. And you put a little pat of butter and a little sprinkle of brown sugar on each one. And then you put it in the oven at like 200 and they candy. So you cook them for a while. I don't know the actual length of time because my grandmother always makes this. Okay. And they candy and they are so delicious. My in laws didn't know about this. They're like, Oh, I hate candied yams. And they come they go for those first now because they've learned they're so good. So that is my personal family favorite, that I've convinced lots and lots of people is delicious.

Jennifer Ng 26:08

Yeah, do you have any last advice or resources for people who want to learn more about our food system or want to get involved or take steps in their own life to practice?

Dr. Heather Carpenter 26:22

I think anytime somebody sells you something as amazing in green in the grocery store that's highly packaged, you are welcome to be very suspicious. They've learned that green is a marketing strategy. So suspicion of stuff, be aware that most foods, especially the big ones that we're used to the chocolates, the shrimp, the, you know, the beef, these big things have some ethical challenges. So the more that you can find food that is more transparent, the better it is for you for the world.

I think one of the cool things about food is there's so many ways to reduce your environmental and ethical footprint. If you love meat, find a local transparent person, and, you know, like farm and eat meat from there. If you want to go vegetarian, go for it. You know, like, you could go vegan, you can cut out dairy, because dairy is a problem. You could cut out beef because it's a problem, but still eat your other stuff. You could I love beef so I'm just gonna eat local beef and I'm gonna find this amazing cow that's local, you know? Like, there are so many different ways to reduce your impact.

And in terms of resources, there are so many it's really, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give you a great resource. Like Michael Pollan and his stuff is great, but he's also a rich white guy, who's a little - he tries he really does try - but he's still clueless okay, um, you know, I'm clueless. I'm a middle class white girl. I'm still clueless, you know, like, so you have to take a lot of this, you got to find your own way, unfortunately. But there are simple things like peeled shrimp just avoid it, it's usually slavery and horrible bottom fishing that's highly destructive. Chocolate, it has a lot of slavery and stuff in it, so trying to find and fair trade is questionable, but still better than nothing so like try and find a little bit you know, better chocolate. The more processed it is, the more problematic it often is. But guess what a lot of vegan food is processed. The Impossible Burger? Great. We're not eating meat. It's a highly highly processed food. I think Impossible Burger's kind of great, but it's highly highly processed food. So you know, I think the biggest problem about food is the biggest benefit about food that you have to find your own way. But also you get to find your own way, right? So you can tailor make a response to ethics in an environment that fits your family, fits your taste fits, your, you know, budget, but you're gonna have to figure it out in a way yourself.

Molly Lowney 29:09

You can keep up with what on earth on Spotify, anchor.FM, Google podcasts and upbeacon.com. This is our last episode of the fall semester, but we will be back in the spring. If you would like to submit a topic or questions for future episodes, go to upbeacon.com and click the story idea button on the right hand side of the page.

Jennifer Ng 29:30

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of What on Earth? Keep asking questions.

Molly Lowney 29:35

And good luck on finals. See you next time for season two.

Jennifer Ng 29:41

Special thanks to Dr. Carpenter for appearing on this episode. This podcast is brought to you by The Beacon, hosted and produced by Molly Lowney and Jennifer Ng and music is from freemusicarchive.org
Jennifer Ng is the opinion editor and a photographer for The Beacon. She can be reached at Molly Lowney is a photographer for The Beacon. She can be reached at Dr. Heather Carpenter is a professor with the Environmental Studies department. She can be reached at carpente@up.edu. lowney21@up.edu. .

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PODCAST: What On Earth? Episode 5: Food for thought

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Food is a huge part of the holiday season and with the year we've had so far, hearty meals are much needed. But the food we eat also has many intersections with climate change and the ongoing pandemic.

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Sustaining Food: Cutting the Carbon Footprint of Food Production, Transportation, and Disposal

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Sustaining Food: Cutting the Carbon Footprint of Food Production, Transportation, and Disposal

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00:30 Andrew Jones: People don't often think about this, but what we eat and the ways our food is produced has a big impact on climate change. To my mind, climate change is the defining problem of our times. And food systems are such an integral part of this challenge. They are both driving the problem in many different and complex ways, and they're also being affected by the problem. Food systems encompass how food is produced, the way food is processed and stored and transported, the way that it's sold and retailed and consumed. It encompasses so many different behaviors, from the way that individuals act to the way that institutions behave. And therefore there are immense amount of opportunities for intervening through policies and programs to change how institutions and individuals behave to affect this problem.

01:24 Speaker 2: In today's episode, we're talking about how food production, transportation and waste contribute to climate change with experts from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the School for Environment and Sustainability. We'll also get into some of the large scale and attainable changes that can reduce the impact our food systems have on greenhouse gas emissions.

01:45 S2: Hello and welcome to Population Healthy, a podcast from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Join us as we dig into important public health topics, stuff that affects the health of all of us at a population level. From the microscopic to the macro-economic, the social to the environmental, from neighborhoods to cities, states to countries and around the world.

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02:18 S2: Andrew Jones is an associate professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. His work looks at how climate change affects global food systems, how producing food impacts the environment itself, and the ways we can bring food to our tables that have less impact on the environment.

02:34 AJ: So, climate change encompasses lots of complex changes that are occurring globally, generally refers to the gradual warming of our planet, and really what's driving that is the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, largely from human activities, that actually trap heat in the atmosphere and keep it so that we're actually warming gradually and gradually over the decades. Obviously, agriculture uses fossil fuels for things like tractors, and other machinery that we use for growing our food, for producing inorganic fertilizers that are actually manufactured to improve the nutrient content of soils that uses a lot of fossil fuel as well.

03:16 AJ: But one of the big sort of hidden ways that our systems of food production impact climate change is through deforestation and the clearing of trees which serve as carbon sinks, they actually can trap carbon dioxide. When those trees are cut down to make way for land, for new crops, or for grazing and for animals, it releases lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, through the trees that are cut down but also through the soils that actually contain a lot of the carbon. That is really a big driver of climate emissions from our food systems.

03:47 AJ: Another really big way that agriculture has impacts on climate change is through rearing cattle. Emissions from cattle themselves, and other ruminant animals like goats, can make a big impact. They actually produce methane through their metabolism of food, so when they're going around grazing, they're actually belching out methane into the atmosphere. And methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon is. And so, deforestation, release of methane from livestock, as well as lots of fossil fuel use, and other things like growing rice in flooded patties, these are all ways that our food systems have impacts on climate change.

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04:26 AJ: Well, when we're talking about food systems we're really talking about the systems of not just producing food, but transporting it, storing it, processing it, getting it to consumers through retail outlets, and ultimately the way that consumers use and waste or lose food in the home. So food systems encompass the entirety of food from what we often talk about, cradle to grave, the time it's produced till when it's actually consumed our wasted or lost.

04:52 AJ: So when we think about sustainability, we can, for example, change how we produce food. We can look at ways to reduce the amount of energy that goes into the food production. This could be through using different forms of mechanization or new forms of mechanization. We can look at different ways of using water resources, so that it's more efficient. We can apply practices that we have learned through fields like agro-ecology, which looks at a more system's approach to growing food, looking at ways in which the not just inputs like fertilizers and water and pesticides can be used to increase yields, but looking at the larger ecological context within which food is grown, and understand how to use that local ecology to reduce exposure to pests, to enhance soil fertility and to increase yields without lots of external inputs.

05:45 AJ: So there are lots of technologies we can think about that can help to change the actual process of food production itself. On the flip side, there's the issue of consumer demand and what can consumers do to change what our food systems look like. Obviously, if consumers change what they are demanding from the food system, the food industry and farmers will change their behavior in response to that.

06:00 AJ: I think one really interesting story about how food systems are beginning to change is around the issue of fake meat. We see lots of new products coming online that are looking at ways of mimicking the taste, the look, the texture of actual meat products. Burger King, White Castle, Carl's Junior, these fast food chains have actually entered into contracts with these companies to start producing fake meat products. To me, that's a fascinating step forward in terms of thinking about how to change the food system through large institutions that have a big impact on what people eat.

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06:49 S2: At the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, Martin Heller researches the impact of food and agricultural systems on the environment. He has also worked with one of the leaders in the fake meat industry to help them quantify the full impact their product has on the environment using a tool called Life Cycle Assessment.

07:07 Martin Heller: Life Cycle Assessment is essentially an environmental accounting tool, but it's a tool that's based on the understanding that the environmental impact of the goods and services that support our modern society come not just from producing those goods but also by activities that occur upstream from that manufacturing, mining of raw materials or fuels, production of electricity, transportation of all of those things, as well as downstream from the manufacturing. Again, transportation concerns, use of products. If we're thinking about something like an automobile, much of the energy and resources that go into that full life cycle occur at the use phase when we're actually driving the car over its life.

07:58 MH: And then we also need to think about ultimate disposal at the end of life of a product. So the idea here is, in order to really capture the full environmental impacts of using a product, we need to look across that full life cycle to better understand where those impacts are occurring.

08:20 S2: We're at the point now that large organizations can use these life cycle assessments to really scrutinize their food purchases. Then they can make adjustments to lower their overall environmental impact. And that's what Beyond Meat did early on.

08:34 MH: Beyond Meat is active in this plant-based meat alternative space. There are a lot of assumptions that these plant-based meat alternatives have a better environmental performance than the animal-based foods that they are looking to compete against. Beyond Meat was certainly interested in communicating that type of message to consumers, but they were interested in really putting some scientific rigour behind those claims. So we were able to work with Beyond Meat to do a life-cycle assessment and look very closely at the production of their Beyond Burger, which is the plant-based burger that tastes and eats like a beef burger.

09:24 MH: In that study we were able to work with Beyond Meat and very closely look at the ingredients that go into producing the Beyond Burger, along with getting information on the processing stages that they're using and the energy requirements there. We took a look at the packaging that they're using, as well as their current transportation distribution and then compare that against a similar life-cycle assessment of beef production in the US. And the results from that were pretty striking. We found that the Beyond Burger contributed 90% less greenhouse gas emissions but we also looked at other environmental impacts, so 46% less energy use up to 99% less impact on water scarcity and 93% less impact on land use.

10:19 MH: So this was a unique study, because there's been a lot of evidence in the past, of the differences between plant commodities, so like the pea protein that is the protein source in the Beyond Burger, we know that producing that on a farm has lower impacts than producing beef itself, but we've seen few examples of actually bringing those ingredients together into a consumer-facing product like the Beyond Burger. So this was an opportunity to really demonstrate that bringing all those ingredients together and processing it still results in a product that has significantly less impact than the animal-based food.

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11:03 AJ: The way our food systems look today is not a foregone conclusion. Policies and programs and decisions that have been made, by us, over many decades, have shaped the way our food systems look today. To me, that is encouraging because it means that we can make new decisions, put in place new policies that can remake our food systems in the image that we want them to look like for our future. Another huge way that our food system contributes to climate change is through food loss and waste. If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, behind China and the US.

11:43 AJ: Food loss and waste accounts for more than four gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents each year. In the United States, most of the food that we waste is at the retail and consumer end of the food system. Because food is so cheap in the United States, we are highly incentivized to use it inefficiently, and so we waste it. If you go to the grocery store you may buy a head of lettuce or a bunch of apples or some other produce and you may not use all of it over the course of a few days, and therefore you throw a lot of it out.

12:14 AJ: In developing countries, most of the food loss and waste that we see is happening at the end of the food system around agricultural production. So, food is grown and it ends up rotting or being stored inefficiently or being transported in such a way that is not kept cool. So we have a lot of waste going on all over the world, but it's happening in very different ways for very different reasons around the world.

12:38 AJ: In the area of sustainable food systems we often look at food waste as being the low-hanging fruit for how we can begin to address carbon emissions from our food system. In any other sector, if you were losing a third or a half of your product there's no way you would stand for that, as a business person. One example of a way you can reduce food loss and waste is through cafeterias and dining halls. Here, at University of Michigan, recently they did away with trays in the dining halls so that students, instead of loading up lots of food onto a tray, will take an individual dish at each station. And therefore when you take less food you're less likely to take too much and then waste it. So it's a very simple change that was made that can have a big impact.

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13:28 S2: To make positive changes, there are seemingly simple things large institutions can do. And for institutions, it starts with champions like Patty Ramos. She is an alumna of the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a lecturer there, where she shares her experience as a food procurement manager at large organizations.

13:44 Patty Ramos: Greening the environment and greening food-source operations has kinda always been a passion of mine. I was actually thinking about why I enjoyed doing that, or why it's so ingrained me, and when I was thinking about that I was thinking back when I was growing up. And I grew up in a single parent home, and my mom would be very savvy on saving food and making sure that it would last a long time. So we would do strategies like freeze our milk in little containers, or we would freeze loaves of bread and take out a slice when we needed it. We would wash Ziploc bags, which actually we got from my Nani, who grew up in the Depression. So it actually... I do these things to this day, and when friends come to my house they see the labs drying and they think I'm weird, but it's truly a part of me. So when I was in food service manager roles I automatically thought, "What can we do to make our operation more sustainable?"

14:34 PR: I was the Food Service Director for Borgess-Lee, which is a critical access hospital in a small town called Dowagiac, Michigan. It was an excellent place because we had so little waste to begin with and we had such a strong control on our waste already, because of the size of our facility. We also had a really small staff. They had been there a long time, some have been there 10, 20, 30 years. So a lot of longevity, not much turnover. So when my wheels started turning on what I could implement to improve sustainability, my mind immediately went to composting. I bought a composter online, I developed a training program for my team, and I was able to train that small team on what they could deviate to the composter and what they couldn't.

15:14 PR: So, things like vegetable scraps, fruit scraps, eggshells, all those things could go into the composter. Slowly but surely we were able to create dirt in that composter. Once we made dirt we were able to put it into flower beds in the garden on site. So it was great that we didn't have to emit any greenhouse gases to transport that dirt somewhere else.

15:33 PR: Once we filled our composter I had to solve the next problem, "How are we gonna keep diverting this waste so we just don't stop our program that we started?" And I did a quick Google search and, lo and behold, there was a hog farm in Decatur, which is between Kalamazoo and Dowagiac. So I connected with that farmer and he was agreeable to come to our facility bi-weekly. So we were able to divert everything that couldn't go in the composter to these hogs. We could divert bread, meats, oils and fats could go to them as well, because they will eat anything.

16:04 S2: When Ramos moved to a larger health organization in Metro Detroit, she realized her homegrown composting operation wouldn't scale. But by thinking critically about community needs, she was able to devise a new food waste diversion strategy.

16:17 PR: It's important to realize that when you're implementing a food waste diversion strategy that you're being realistic and you're being flexible with the team that you have, and you're implementing something that's going to stick. So instead of composting at Providence Southfield, we noticed that there's a lot of food banks in the area, and Fish and Loaves is a food bank that's right across the street. So we connected with them and we were having a lot of waste from our cafeteria specifically, so we were able to devise a strategy where we took food that could easily be frozen and be re-heated and still be delicious and nutritious. We froze that food and we worked with two men and a truck to bring that food to Fish and Loaves on a bi-weekly basis.

16:58 PR: What's hard to do with a sustainable program implementing food waste reduction strategies and operation is getting everyone on board. So it took a lot of convincing of my staff. A lot of them were very skeptical. I always would say, with my teams, that if something isn't working or it's creating more work for us, we can always go back to the way things were. So I think that's important when you're leading a team and leading change like this. So I slowly got them on board, and they were able to see that they were making connection with their community, and their environment, and having a positive impact.

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17:37 AJ: When we look at food systems, one of the main characteristics we find within them is inequity. We see imbalances and food that's available in highly developed countries versus more developing countries. We see inequity in terms of who is experiencing symptoms of malnutrition. We see inequity in terms of the resources that are available to do something about the problem. And when we look at climate change, the story is the same. Those countries that are responsible for the bulk of the emissions are higher-income countries, like the United States and Western Europe. Yet those countries that are facing the most dire consequences of climate change are lower-income countries, especially in the tropics. We anticipate that yields of many key staple crops, like corn and rice and wheat, are likely to go down in many of the tropical countries that are also happen to be more lower-income countries.

18:33 AJ: Whereas in some of the higher latitudes, the yields of some of these crops are actually anticipated to go up with climate change and increase. We see the pole-ward migration of fish away from tropical regions where fisheries are really, really important for the livelihoods of many, many communities. At the same time the nutritional impacts of climate change through the food system are likely to be the most dire in developing countries as well, where we already see the highest numbers of individuals with food insecurity, with under-nutrition, with micronutrient deficiencies.

19:08 AJ: And so, the negative impacts of climate change are going to be multiple-fold in these lower income areas. So, equity is a really big part of the story for how we think about the impacts of climate change through the food system. Restructuring our food systems, to make them more sustainable, is perhaps the most promising way to simultaneously address public health, equity, and environmental issues. If we take the example of shifting towards more agro-ecological approaches to agriculture where we think not just about increasing yields but looking at the entire ecosystem within which food is produced, that lens accounts not just for improving the productivity of crops, which it certainly does tend to that, through concerns around soil fertility and pest management, but it also looks at the farmer herself and her ability to earn a living wage, and her ability to access healthy foods, and her ability to take care of her family.

20:10 AJ: Sustainability and approaches that seek to enhance sustainability food systems can, by their nature, look across multiple outcomes in a way that our industrial food system model looks strictly at just profits or just at yields, in a very narrow way.

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20:29 AJ: When we discuss climate change, I think we often feel powerless to change this incredibly complex global phenomenon. And in many ways the solutions we need are going to come from governments and international cooperation around big things like energy use. But that said, there are individual actions that we can take that can have an impact. As a family or individual, the top three things you can do to lower your carbon footprint would be to drive less in your car, hop on fewer flights, and change how you eat. All of these things are important, but we often underestimate the impact our diet can have on carbon emissions. High carbon diets actually are responsible for nearly three times the carbon emissions of a household's average electricity usage, or it's average personal vehicle usage. So it really is a major factor that we need to consider when we look at our own individual or family carbon footprints.

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21:33 S2: This is our final episode of Population Healthy for this season. We hope you've enjoyed it and learned a lot along the way. If this is your first episode, be sure to check us out wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more about public health topics from tracking epidemics, to mobile health, to improving well-being for moms and their babies. We'll be back in the summer of 2020, with more episodes on pressing public health topics. In the meantime, follow us on social media, at UMICHSPH to learn more about public health. You can also check out the show notes on our website, Publichealth.umich.edu/podcast for more resources about the topics discussed in today's episode. If you want to stay up to date with the latest research and expertise for Michigan Public Health, subscribe to our Population Healthy newsletter, at publichealth.umich.edu/news/newsletter.

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Sustaining Food: Cutting the Carbon Footprint of Food Production, Transportation, and Disposal

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noise] [music] [automated voice] [background conversation] 00:30 Andrew Jones: People don't often think about this, but what we eat and the ways our food is produced has a big impact on climate change. To my mind, climate change is the defining problem of our times.

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Eat For The Planet is the leading podcast covering the people, ideas, and technologies shaping the future of food.

Since launching in June 2017, the podcast has featured conversations with some of the leading voices who are working to transform our food system.

#136 - Pat Mooney on Two Different Futures for Food Systems

#135 - A Better paperclip Maximizer?

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Eat For The Planet - Eat For The Planet Podcast

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This Podcast aims to answer the question "how can we eat in a way that nourishes us without starving the planet?" The show features conversations with food industry leaders, health and sustainability experts, as well as entrepreneurs and creative minds who are redefining the future of food.

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Climate change food calculator: What's your diet's carbon footprint?

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Climate change food calculator: What's your diet's carbon footprint?

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By Nassos Stylianou, Clara Guibourg and Helen Briggs
BBC News | Published: 9 August 2019

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Climate change food calculator: What’s your diet’s carbon footprint?

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Check the environmental impact of what you eat and drink.

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Table of Contents | Understanding Food and Climate Change

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Not ready to be vegan? Here are 5 tweaks to make your diet more Earth-friendly

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Not ready to be vegan? Here are 5 tweaks to make your diet more Earth-friendly

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Feeding the world's 7.6 billion people is taking a serious toll on the planet. Global food production accounts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and agricultural systems cover a whopping 43 percent of the world's desert and ice-free land.

"As climate change approaches a point of no return and our land and marine ecosystems become increasingly fragile, the need for a change to our food system becomes more and more urgent," says , a Bruce Friedrich TED Fellow and cofounder of the Good Food Institute .

What's more, the impacts of food production go beyond climate change and habitat loss. "Widespread antibiotic use amongst farmed animals is leading to growing antibiotic resistance in humans that threatens modern medicine as we know it," Friedrich explains. "And an increasing amount of diseases originating from livestock are spreading to human populations."
Here are five simple ways to make your diet more climate-friendly.
Start small

Let go of the all-or-nothing mindset, and play around with portion size. "Meat used to be the side dish, but more and more, it's become the centerpiece," says Graham Hill , author of Weekday Vegetarian . If you typically eat meat at all of your meals, start by adding one meat-free dish to your day or designating a meatless day of the week. And if you're worried about not getting enough nutrients, you can easily supplement meals with protein-rich alternatives like nuts, legumes and beans.

Choose lower-impact meats

Plant-based food production typically requires less carbon emissions than livestock. For example, producing 100 grams of beef protein releases 90 times more emissions than it takes to produce the same amount of pea protein. But if you're not ready to give up meat, you can still choose more climate-friendly fare.

"From a carbon perspective, chicken, pork and wild fish are less impactful than beef, lamb and farmed fish - and by quite a lot," Hill says. The latter produce more emissions of methane and greenhouse gases, require more land and create more pollutants.

Ditch the dairy

"There are so many plant-based vegan options available: cheeses, yogurts, butter, milk and ice cream," Cumic says. In addition to these vegan substitutes, there are many creative ways to reduce your overall dairy intake. For example, it takes four times the milk to make Greek yogurt as it does to make traditional yogurt, so making a simple switch can make a big difference.

is also one of the worst offenders in terms of carbon footprint, but not all are created equal. compared mozzarella and cheddar and found cheddar had a higher environmental impact because it's made using more milk and is heavier to transport. And keep in mind the longer your cheese is aged, the more energy is required for storage. You can also swap out cheese altogether, and experiment with flavoring your sandwiches, salads and pastas with alternative (but delicious) add-ins, like avocado, sauteed veggies, almonds or hummus. Have a sweet tooth? Skip the ice cream, and opt for a berry or chocolate sorbet or Italian ice.

Use savory substitutions

Meatless doesn't mean flavorless. "If you want plant-based food to taste good, you need to know how to flavor with things that are not going to ruin the ingredients," Cumic says. "You want to highlight the ingredients, not cover them up or drown them in sauces."

She recommends using flavor enhancers such as kombu (an edible kelp), vegan dashi, shiitake mushrooms, nutritional yeast and alaea (Hawaiian red salt) - these ingredients are packed with savory taste. You can also use small meat portions to season your dishes rather than making it the main course. For example, adding a little bit of meat or oyster sauce to your veggie-stir fry or pasta sauce might be enough to satisfy those carnivorous cravings.

Connect with others and have fun

Trying new dishes can be intimidating, but you don't have to do it alone. Teaming up with other folks who want to expand their palates can make it more enjoyable, plus research suggests that we're more likely to stick to new habits when we have social support.

For inspiration, Cumic suggests going to farmers' markets to look for vegan vendors, sampling a variety of dishes, and talking to the chefs about their favorite recipes. If you're hesitant to experiment at home, try ordering new dishes from a local restaurant first to figure out what you like. You can also tantalize your senses before you even take a bite. "Take the time to add that magic touch - choose the right bowl, set the table, be mindful of aroma, texture and visual appeal," she says.

We've all heard of Zoom happy hours, so why not designate a weekly or monthly meatless meal with friends and family? For a more formal experience, you could even sign up to take virtual vegetarian cooking classes together. Creating meaningful memories around food has another benefit, Fogg says. Infusing positive emotion into the experience can reinforce new habits and help them stick.
Watch Bruce Friedrich's TED Talk here:

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Not ready to be vegan? Here are 5 tweaks to make your diet more Earth-friendly

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Feeding the world's 7.6 billion people is taking a serious toll on the planet. Global food production accounts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and agricultural systems cover a whopping 43 percent of the world's desert and ice-free land.

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Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered

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Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered

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Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered (Published 2022)

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Your diet affects climate change. Here’s what you need to know about eating meat, dairy, seafood and produce, and preventing food waste in a warming world.

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The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat 

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The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat 

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Michael Pollan | 2009

Amazon

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Jot notes and keep track of your thinking. 📝

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Jot notes and keep track of your thinking. 📝

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👑 Pro-tips:

1) Read for a while. 📖

2) Hide or pause the text (to avoid copying) 🙈

3) Jot what's most important and keep reading 📝

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Wasting food wastes everything: Water, food, money, labor, love, and land. 

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Wasting food wastes everything: Water, food, money, labor, love, and land. 

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Talk with someone about your thinking. 🗣️💬

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Talk with someone about your thinking. 🗣️💬

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👑 Pro-tips:

1) Join forces with like-minded people. 🔗

2) Build off each other's ideas. 🧱

3) Use the Big Ideas and Vocab words on the Word Wall on the right of this Padlet. 👉🏼

3) Plan the next steps or possible areas to research. 🔮

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Make or design something to share with others. 🛠️

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Make or design something to share with others. 🛠️

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Take action locally. Ideally with other people. 

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Take action locally. Ideally with other people. 