#7 Food Choices
Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash
Can we eat our way to a better planet?
There are new ways of cultivating meat that do not involve slaughterhouses and resource intensive farming practices. Lab-grown meats is one of the ways that reduce our dependency on farm grown meats. Learn more about cultivated meat and other sustainable food production methods and see how our food choices can have an impact on the planet.
Perspective 1: Cultivated meat could become a more sustainable form of food production than traditional farming.
Lab-grown meat has the potential to feed a growing population in a more sustainable fashion and reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions arising from traditional intensive farming practices.
Given that global production and consumption of meat is rising steadily, the cutting age technology of cultivated meats can diversify the supply to meet the demand.
https://time.com/6109450/sustainable-lab-grown-mosa-meat/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.749298/full
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61182294
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study
Perspective 2: Other sustainable food production methods can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
About 56% of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane, comes from agriculture. Agricultural practices and food production that are more sustainable and more profitable can be implemented to address the greenhouse gas emissions.
Some examples of greener practices include adoption of regenerative agriculture on farms or, in the case of cattle farming, reducing forest loss by planting fast-growing eucalyptus trees in the same areas where cattle graze.
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210629-the-australian-tree-cutting-brazilian-beefs-emissions
https://www.wwf.org.au/what-we-do/food
Perspective 3: Deliberate and sustainable food choices can better the planet.
Aside from transforming our food system, changing to a more sustainable diet can be good for both ourselves and the environment.
Some deliberate and sustainable food choices can include eating nutritious plant-rich diets, reducing and repurposing food waste, choosing diverse food choices that are more sustainably produced or caught or eat what is in season in the local economy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/04/rules-eating-fight-climate-change/618515/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/28/healthy-diet-means-a-healthy-planet-study-shows
https://www.wwf.org.uk/betterbasket
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