Always Learning

I wasn't sure if it was a worthwhile endeavor, but I decided to go to the lecture anyway. A few days ago a friend sent me an email about a talk held at the Boston Museum of Science about food sustainability. It's a topic near and dear to my heart so I would go. But as Friday dragged on I began to wonder if I needed to go. I mean, what else new could someone tell me? I just wanted to go home and curl up on the couch instead, but since I love talking about food so much I decided to give it a try.

I'm so glad I went. The first speaker is the CEO of chain of service restaurants that has cut their carbon footprint by 33% over the past 10 years. Not only did she explain why change is necessary (something I was already familiar with) but she gave specific areas we could change to maximize the effects of our changed diet.

For instance, food must be addressed because it makes up 20% of carbon emissions in the U.S. In the next 25 years we have to reduce emissions by 80%. If we fail to reduce our food carbon footprint we would have to eliminate ALL transportation emissions (currently 40%) ALL energy emissions (20%) , and ALL other carbon emissions (wish I could remember the other categories).

Get rid of all cars? Get rid of all electricity? Not bloody likely.

But the good news is that of the 20% of all food emissions HALF of the cost is involved in waste. Americans waste 50% of the food they buy. By being more cautious about what we buy and what we throw out we're doing a little bit to reduce waste, but waste occurs above our level as well. For example, grocers throw out imperfect fruits and vegetables.

The second biggest problem is beef and dairy. Cows put out methane, methane is worse than CO2. The more beef and cheese we eat the more cows we populate the earth with. Now our speaker didn't endorse giving up meet or cheese entirely, but suggested treating both as a special treat and reducing frequency and size of all beef and dairy products.

She was particularly interested in cheese, especially imported cheese. Cheese that is imported not only includes to emissions of cows, crops to grow for cow's food, heavy duty appliances run on the farm, but also requires refrigeration from start to finish. If it's imported, more than likely it's shipped by airplane, lots of emissions there, and then delivered in refrigerated trucks. It's refrigerated in the store and is stored in our refrigerators. It's also perishable, so when a part of the cheese goes bad, and we toss it because we can't even think about putting it in our compost, we've just wasted all the energy needed to create the cheese.

I've got to admit, I've never thought that deeply about cheese. I have thought about the locality of cheese as a benefit, but I've never connected cheese as one huge thing I could do to save the planet.

Am I going to eliminate cheese from our diet? With my husband? Not bloody likely.

But here's what we are going to do. We'll look for locally produced cheese whenever possible and buy only what we can reasonably eat. I intend to cut back at least a little bit on the frequency we buy cheese too. The same goes for milk. I may consider making my own cheese.

Beef isn't a huge issue for us since I don't eat it, but Gerd has agreed to go meatless one day a week, including lunches. I'm already there, but will be making sure I'm on track too.

Interestingly enough, local doesn't always mean greener. Hot house tomatoes, for example, use far more energy, even if produced locally, than importing tomatoes grown in the ground in a southern climate. Seasonal and organic is the key. Local is best if it's seasonal and organic, but not if it uses bad practice (chemicals or excessive energy use). Ideally we would grow all of our own food (once again, not bloody likely for me).

Anyway, the lecture was great, and now I'm thinking all about how I can reduce my food footprint. I even made bread today.