Diet for a Healthy Planet

In a college biology class during the fall of 1972, I was introduced to a groundbreaking book called Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappé.? This was an era when global food scarcity was a big concern, especially with “The Population Bomb.”? What Lappé brought to light was the incredible amount of agricultural inefficiency and waste inherent in raising livestock.? Her concept of plant protein combinations (having grain and legumes in the same meal) have since been debunked but the basic premise is more applicable today than ever.? Food for all can be easily achieved if people adopt a meat-free diet.? World hunger is NOT a foregone conclusion. ?I was hooked and became a vegetarian.? Some go vegetarian for health reasons.? Others make the change out of concern for animal welfare.? For me, the primary motivating factor was food equity.? How could I continue to eat meat when so many were going hungry in the world?? For the next ten years, I remained vegetarian and devoted my life to revolutionizing our food systems.? What we consume has major implications for the climate, food equity, biodiversity as well as our health.? Whatever your favorite issue is, eating lower on the food chain is a good thing.

Let’s step back and take a look at the big picture.? Most of this analysis comes from Hannah Ritchie’s book, Not the End of the World.? We generally think about reducing greenhouse gas emissions through weaning humanity off of fossil fuels.? This should be our overall priority since fossil fuel energy accounts for about three quarters of all emissions.? However, agricultural land use and food production represent 26% of all global emissions.? On our small Spaceship Earth, 46% of habitable land is used for agriculture.? Of all that land, 77% is devoted to livestock, the remaining 23% supports crops used for direct human consumption.? This is probably not news for those who have driven across the United States, coast to coast.? Most of the farmland between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rockies, Ohio to Colorado, is filled with corn or other grain feed.? How does this food system account for so many emissions?? Check out this chart to get a sense.? Land use change (in green) is a big part of beef’s contribution.? Deforestation is a major issue globally – with about one third of the world’s forests lost to agriculture.? The Amazon rainforest has been the poster child for this devastation, all in the name of raising more beef.? Farm practices (in brown) are also a major contributor.? Modern agriculture has essentially turned soils from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters.? One interesting point to stress from this data – transportation actually plays a very small role for most foods.? It's a common misperception that deriving as much of your food locally can make a big difference with greenhouse gas emissions.? What this graph demonstrates is that what you eat makes much more impact than where it was grown.?

Eating meat is incredibly inefficient.? For every 100 calories of grain that goes into a cow, we consume 3 calories of meat.? That’s equivalent to buying a loaf of bread, eating one slice and throwing out the rest!? Recognizing that food is a hot topic for anyone, think about diet change as an important consideration as a climate change agent.? A good start is reducing meat consumption, especially beef.? Simply replacing beef-based meals with chicken or fish can have a big impact on your carbon footprint.?

Unlike fossil fuel emissions there are few technological solutions for food-based emissions (one exception being manufactured meats). ?The primary way to address these is through individual behavior change.? So, what’s your plan of action?? Here at the World HQ of 52 Weeks we are big fans of the Mediterranean Diet.? It has well established positive health outcomes as well as being easier on the planet.? We’ll complete this newsletter with a quote from a previous one (“What’s for Dinner?”).?

Finally, I’d like to end with this aspirational thought experiment.? Imagine that the vast majority of human carnivores in the world have significantly reduced their animal food intake.? When we look at overall greenhouse gas emissions, the reduction of that animal food footprint would be just a small part of the turnaround.? A large amount of acreage would need to be repurposed. What if that agricultural land was restored to a regenerative agriculture practice or, better yet, to a natural ecosystem that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere.? In other words, by having that land revert to a regenerative farm, forest or wild grasslands, we create the conditions for negative emissions.? This is referred to as a carbon opportunity cost. According to these researchers, if the world moved to a Mediterranean-style diet by 2050, that opportunity would globally sequester 332 billion tons of CO2 which roughly translates into nine years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions.? Now that is a vision to strive for!