What’s A Better Diet for Reducing Our Carbon Footprint?

I stopped eating meat around 2016. I had just embarked on a mission to improve my personal practices. After learning meat consumption has an impact on the environment, I started looking for a better diet for reducing my carbon footprint.

Since meat protein has a higher carbon footprint than other proteins and some animal farming practices are horrendous*, I decided to stop consuming them. Instead, I adopted a pescatarian diet.

If you don’t mind ruining your taste for meat, read this article from Rolling Stone magazine. Warning: it’s heartbreaking and may make your blood boil.

Back in the States, my diet is ovo-lacto-vegetarian with a bit of seafood thrown in every few months. Now that I’m back in Singapore where my family eats meat at most meals, it’s hard to stick to that diet. So, whenever I’m in Singapore, I ate more seafood and dishes cooked with meat – taking care to avoid the meat.

Though this seems like cheating, I have my reasons, and I’ll share them later in the post.

I don’t think eating meat is wrong or cruel – it’s part of the cycle of life. My reason for stopping meat consumption is to reduce my participation in the animal farming industry and my personal carbon footprint.

Obviously, the fishing industry has a tonne of faults too – like overfishing and destructive fishing practices. However, seafood’s carbon footprint is generally lower than that of beef, pork, and poultry.

*There are good ethical farmers out there who care about their animals and the environment. In this case, I’m referring to massive animal farms that only care about speed and profit.

Environmental Impact of Meat

First off, here’s why scientists are encouraging us to eat lesser meat, very briefly.

Meat products cause twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods and have a higher carbon footprint per calorie.

This is because livestock not only needs land to live on but also crops grown on land to feed on. As a result, meat production requires larger areas of land to be cleared and more water, pesticides, fertilizers, and etc, to be used. In other words, it’s an inefficient way to eat.

In addition, ruminants such as cattle or sheep produce large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that packs 25 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide.

Just the production of meat and dairy alone accounts for approximately 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To make matters more complicated, many factory farms reared large numbers of animals in their factories to increase their profit. The waste produced is typically used as fertilizers, stored in massive underground pits, or in open-air pools. A large amount of this waste escapes into the environment, affecting water quality, eventually causing health and environmental problems.

Meat production is also the largest driving factor of deforestation globally, further accelerating climate change. In fact, cattle ranching is contributing to 80% of the deforestation taking place in the Amazon. This not only increases global emissions but leads to the degradation of important ecosystems in the Amazon.

• Read about why keeping global warming under 1.5℃ is so important

Meat production harms humans too

Apart from speeding up climate change, meat production harms human health, both physically and psychologically.

One issue about keeping large numbers of animals in relatively small spaces is that they need to be injected with antibiotics to curb the spread of diseases. This practice increases the risk of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics and the release of antibiotics into the water sources through factory effluent.

If left unchecked, this could lead to millions dying due to drug-resistant bacterial infections each year.

Meat and dairy production is also driving violence against local communities in Brazil. Land grabbing, illegal land clearance, and slave labor are all results of our demand for meat and dairy.

Coincidentally, as I was writing this post, I read about the social impact of the meat industry right here in the United States is a great article by The Green Stars Project. It turns out working in the meat industry causes a great deal of psychological stress on the employees and many become traumatized by it. Working conditions are poor and the injury rate is high, and the employers do not care if the employees get injured! Employees are often required to work at breakneck speed for long hours, and many resorted to wearing diapers.

If we factor in the societal and environmental cost of meat production, we’ll see it’s so much higher than the price of a pound of meat.

Points to note when creating a better diet for reducing carbon footprint

Yet reducing our carbon footprint through our diet isn’t always an easy thing to do.

Dietary blindspots

Foods like beef and mutton are clear-cut “winners” in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions, but there are foods whose footprints are easier to miss.

A quick look at this chart tells us that cheese, chocolate, coffee, and shrimp have higher greenhouse gas emissions than pork and poultry per kilogram. However, I’m still eating the former foods and have stopped eating the latter. We’ll likely take longer to eat a kilogram of cheese or chocolate than we would chicken, but I suspect some will beg to differ.

I’m not asking anyone to stop eating cheese, chocolate, or coffee, I’m saying we should keep them in mind. If you too, avoid meat for the environment, you may have overlooked the environmental impact of cheese, chocolate, and coffee too.

Equally important is how and where the food is farmed or produced. Was it grown organically? Where did the food come from? Were the raw materials sustainably harvested? An organically and locally grown chicken would have a lower carbon footprint than fish imported from the other side of the globe.

The issue of food waste

Being home and eating with my meat-eating folks, I realized that we have meat leftovers every now and then. Since food waste is a big problem that not enough people think about, I knew this is an issue.

About a third of all the world’s food goes to waste, and producing, transporting and letting that food rot releases 8-10% of global greenhouse gases. If food waste were a country, it would have the third-biggest carbon footprint after the US and China, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.The Guardian, on How food waste is huge contributor to climate change

Choosing to throw meat away because I don’t eat meat for their high carbon footprint? Yes, I see the absurdity and hypocrisy of it.

Should I start eating meat to reduce food waste when I’m eating with others? Probably. Do I want to? No. The moment I start eating meat when there’s leftover, it’ll become difficult to draw the line. Perhaps the person cooking will unconsciously start cooking more meat, or your friends will have a higher tendency to ask you to dine in places with no seafood or vegetarian options.

• Read about 10 ways to reduce food waste for newbie cooks

The solution? Talk to your family and friends about food waste. We can’t stop others from wasting food. All we can do is to watch our own actions. We’re also not responsible for finishing up someone else’s leftover, but we can all advocate for preventing food waste.

Plant proteins are better than plant-based meat

I freaking love plant-based meat. Back in the States, I cook plant-based meat regularly. They’re pretty impressive in terms of taste and resource use. For example:

The Beyond Meat burger uses 99 percent less water, 93 percent less land and 90 percent less fossil fuel emissions; the Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and 89 percent less fossil fuel emissions than a quarter pound of regular ground beef. NBC, Is fake meat better for you, or the environment?

However, they’re not all that healthy! Plant-based meat, despite the word “plant” in its name, is highly processed after all.

Being highly processed, they tend to contain more sodium and other highly processed ingredients used to create the structure and texture of the “meat”. Being highly processed, they do end up incurring some carbon footprint. In fact, plant-based meat products produce a similar emission as that of chicken!

Of course, there’s a lesser risk of bacterial contamination and no risk of antibiotic resistance when we consume plant-based meat rather than chicken. But there is an even better choice!

Here’s a list of plant proteins that are better for the environment and good for your health:

• Legumes like beans, lentils, and peas
• Soy products like tofu and tempeh
• Nuts and seeds
• Grains
• Mushrooms (really a fungi, not a plant)

Apart from having lower carbon footprints than plant-based meat, these plant proteins are low in fat, high in nutrition, and all-around awesome!

That said, I think plant-based meat substitutes are essential as they make the transition to a plant-heavy diet easier. Sometimes we just need the meaty texture of plant-based meat.

A mostly-plant-based diet can be delicious and healthy

Plant-based meat has come a long way. Many products I’ve tried have been damn delicious in my opinion! In fact, I often prefer the vegetarian version of a dish.

An important thing to keep in mind when moving away from a meat-heavy diet is to not see it as “I don’t get to eat meat anymore”. See it as, “I get to eat more plant protein and try different plant-based meat”.

There are so many brands out there making plant-based meat it’ll be difficult to get bored of a mostly-plant-based diet. Additionally, there are many plant proteins that we can cook in many different ways. Google and YouTube are all you need to find good recipes!

Apart from being beneficial for the environment, adopting a mostly-plant-based diet is very healthy for us if we do it correctly by making good dietary choices – as you would with a regular diet. Choose healthy proteins, cut down on processed foods, use healthy oils, eat more vegetables and fruits, and choose whole grains.

Don’t judge others for their diet

Dietary choices are very psychological. It’s like decluttering. There are some things you don’t want to part with because you’re attached to them. It can be incredibly difficult for someone to stop eating something for psychological or physical reasons.

Some people just love meat. It’s easy for me to give up beef, mutton, and pork because I never liked them. Who am I to judge someone who loves to eat meat?

It’s still difficult for me to resist fried chicken, but I can resist it easier than resisting a cup of coffee. I get withdrawal symptoms when I don’t drink it. If coffee had the carbon footprint of beef, I doubt I’d be able to quit it.

Some people may need to have meat in their diet for health reasons. I have a good friend who is healthier on a keto diet. She eats beef, but she probably has a similar or smaller carbon footprint than a vegetarian because of her lifestyle practices. Diet alone doesn’t reflect everything about a person’s carbon footprint.

I think we need to respect each other and not force our perspectives on others, or worse, judge people for what they eat. Doing that will only turn them off from eating less meat and stunt the conversation about reducing climate change, which is the root of the issue here.

Rather than eliminating, a more effective way could be to reduce consumption. Beef lovers, do consider a weekly Meatless Monday!

Imperfect efforts beat no effort

As I mentioned in the beginning, my dietary restriction isn’t strict. It’s more of a personal preference to eat eco-consciously than for a religious or health reason, so I don’t see a need to be strict about it.

Eating this way makes things easier for everyone involved. My family doesn’t feel stressed including me in family dinners, my friends find it easier to accommodate me, and I don’t feel restricted eating out since vegetarian foods aren’t available everywhere. Yet my dietary carbon footprint is still reduced. And my loved ones have all heard why I stopped eating meat. In a way, I’ve created some awareness!

As I mentioned in this post, imperfect efforts beat no effort. If it’s easier to do in practice, it’ll be easier to sustain and improve the practice. My efforts are far from perfect, but it’s easier to do it in the long run. If billions of us make such long-term “imperfect” efforts, it will make a difference.

I hope you’ve found this post useful. A better diet for reducing our carbon footprint invariably involves reducing beef and mutton consumption, and very importantly, reducing food waste. Additionally, we should think about what other high-emission foods we’re consuming, where they were imported from, and how they were produced.

If you would like to stop eating meat but find it difficult, start by cutting it down. If you can’t do that at all, there are other things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

Whatever you decide to do, just don’t stop trying! We have a climate crisis to fight.

Are you modifying your diet to reduce your carbon footprint? Let me know how it’s going!