Personal Project: Final Project Blog

Well, it's time to wrap things up. What have I learned throughout this personal project? What do I still have left to learn? In a lot of ways, I think I've just scratched the surface of this particular topic, and there's a lot more out there to address.

This project went a different direction than I expected it to when I started out. I originally was planning on making some major changes to my diet. Instead, what I ended up with was a project more about learning what the impact was of the things I was already eating than it was about making radical changes to my eating habits. I ended up making some small changes to my diet, substituting more organic products for mass-produced food, and buying more local food than I ever had. In the process, I tried to analyze what impact both my old and new eating patterns were having on myself, my community, and the planet.

I've learned...

* That our food system is horrible for the planet, and not very good for people, either. It uses way too much land to grow food for both us and the animals we eat, is loaded with artificial crap, and emits a whole bunch of greenhouse gases into the air through both its production and in transporting our food to our plates.
* That industrial meat is probably the biggest culprit in our food system's destruction of the planet, and that we eat way too much of it. Even staying away from red meat can only have limited impacts if you replace it with other types of meat, like chicken or fish.
* That there are some little things that I can do to improve the situation, like by buying meat and produce that is locally farmed and learning to make more things from scratch rather than buying packaged food.
* That you always have to read the fine print, whether you're looking at labels on products or buying food from the farmer's market. What you think you end up getting is not always what you think. So read labels, talk to your local farmers about the practices they use to raise/grow their food, and make up your own mind about the products you're buying. Only buy those things that address the issues you care about or satisfy the goal you hope to achieve.
* That perhaps the biggest impact local food can have is on the local economy, which in turn effects the environmental impact your food choices have. Buying local food means local farmers have more money to expand their operations and hire more help, which in turn helps them expand their operations and sell more local food, and so on and so forth. In the process, more of your food comes from environmentally-friendly farmers (hopefully...see above about talking to farmers about their practices) and travels a shorter distance to get to your plate, which reduces your food's ecological footprint.

Still, there are many more things that I can and should be doing to improve upon my food choices and reduce my food's environmental impacts. To wit:

* Eat less meat. Despite the fact that I've mostly cut beef (the biggest contributor to our food system's huge ecological footprint) out, I've mostly replaced it with chicken. Though a chicken has less impact than a cow, the fact that we as Americans eat so damn many chickens eliminates a big portion of the gains one could achieve by switching from beef to chicken. So the bottom line is that less meat of any kind is good. I'm not saying I'm going to go fully vegetarian, because I just don't think I'm ready for that. But I need to be more of a vegetarian than I currently am. One way to do that might be to...
* Join a CSA. Community-supported agriculture delivers fresh fruit and vegetables from local farmers to your doorstep (okay, most of the time you have to go pick it up yourself instead of having it delivered) each week. There are several of them around Bloomington, and CSA's are popping up all over the country. And if I did join a CSA, it might force me to...
* Get even more creative about making more of my own food. There's still so much I feel like I can be doing differently that I have not yet done. Joining a CSA might cause me to make more vegetarian dishes. Again, it's not like I'd give up meat entirely, but making a vegetarian dish and shunning meat for a night certainly wouldn't kill me. Besides, meat is expensive, no matter where you buy it.
* Keep learning about the issues. There's plenty out there to read about our food system and how to make it more sustainable. I read parts of Food, Inc., which revealed how industrialized food has become in the name. But there's a lot more writing that discusses people's journeys through the food system and their attempts to change it. I'm hoping to delve into some of those writings in the near future.

So I guess that's it. The project has been good, but it's only been the tip of iceberg as far as learning about food and changing my diet. I'm looking forward to making some more of those changes in the coming months.

Have a great rest of the semester and enjoy your holidays.