Personal Project Update

One of the reasons I chose the personal project that I did was to try and cut down on my food impact on the environment. The food system we have in place now is tough on the environment in general, and particular on greenhouse gas emissions. So one of the goals I set out for myself was to try and reduce my GHG emissions that come from the food I eat. Not having a good way to accurately measure my GHGs, it's hard to put a quantifiable number to this goal, but I'm doing what I can.

There are three things I wanted to try and do to accomplish this goal: significantly reduce my red meat consumption (substituting more fish and chicken as sources of protein), buy more organic food, and buying more local food. Today I'll take a bit of a look at all three of these things.

Let's start with the red meat part. There are a few good reasons to reduce (or completely give up) eating dead cows. One is for health reasons. Red meat has lots of fat and cholesterol. For people who already have a good deal of these things, adding more would be a problem. I generally don't have such issues, but that doesn't mean I don't wanna try and stay lean and mean. Having said that, I probably still used to eat meat once to twice a week before starting this little project. Since then, I can only come up with one instance, and that's when I cooked up a pot of chili using grass-fed beef that I picked up at the farmer's market (which, coincidentally hits on all three of my main GHG-reducing activities). Otherwise, I think I've been dead-cow free for pretty much the whole semester. I don't even think I've had a burger at a restaurant, which is unusual. No, instead I've been using more chicken to make things that I used to make with beef, and have even tried my hand at fish tacos with mixed results.

Buying more local and organic food has been a mixed bag. I've definitely been shopping much more at Bloomingfoods and the farmer's market than I did before, and the vast majority of my produce these days is organic. To try and quantify this, I'm keeping close track of my food purchases over the next few weeks and will report on what percentage of my food is either organic or bought from local sources (or both). More to come on that soon.

But back to the "meat" of the issue. What kind of impact has my (almost) no red meat diet had? One of the studies that I read discussed both food miles and meat consumption and how they impact greenhouse gas emissions in our food supply (see citation below). It does this via a life-cycle analysis of the food production process from beginning to end. It finds that food production is responsible for approximately 5/6 of a typical household's food-related GHG emissions. On the other hand, transportation as a whole makes up only 11% of emissions, with delivery from producer to retail comprising only 4% of the grand total. This actually suggests that buying local is not very effective as a way of cutting down greenhouse gases. When looking at red meat in particular, though, the study finds that it (along with dairy) is generally 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Shifting a small amount of food consumption from meat to chicken, fish or a vegetarian diet can actually have as big an impact on GHGs than switching to an all-local diet.

So this seems to suggest that by not eating red meat, I'm helping to reduce food-related climate impacts. Buying local? Perhaps not as much. However, there are other benefits to buying local, which I will probably address at a later date. One big drawback, though, is that I have not given up dairy, and I'm kind of big on dairy. I drink milk practically every day, and most days I have a cup of yogurt with lunch. So that makes me wonder if I'm really having that much impact. Maybe if I can find something good to substitute for dairy, my impact would be greater.

I guess that is it for now.

CITATION: Weber, Christopher L. and H. Scott Matthews. "Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States." Environmental Science & Technology 42 (2008), 3508-3513.