A Diet For Our Future
A discussion that I think needs more attention in this current time.
Which diet is the most sustainable going forwards in to this era of large scale population, shrinking agricultural land per capita and ongoing (and increasing) climate effects? In this era of globalisation, which diet can an individual choose that limits their personal ecological footprint?
For a long time, vegetarianism has been seen as a mainly moral/ethical choice; challenging cultural/traditional beliefs towards animal care. Veganism was often seen as some extreme form of puritanism, almost masochistic and impractical for the real world.
At last there is serious and open discussion about the environmental effects of animal agriculture. Leaving aside the criticism it has received, it truly seems the movie Cowspiracy was a turning point in popular understanding of the impact our dietary choices have [1].
So, do we go vegan? Do we push for veganism? Is vegetarian enough? Vegetarian with caveats? “Normal” omnivore diet, but with extreme moderation of all meats? Keep the same variety, but responsibly source all meat from good sources?
Again, leaving aside the animal welfare point, or the morality of eating/enslaving animals, but based on sustainability alone… what diet is realistically best for our future?
Well, the first challenging news. There is a negative correlation between animal welfare and emissions. The better a life you give the animals, with more enrichment and space to move, then the more ammonia and/or methane will be produced. This is a trend seen in pork fattening, beef fattening, dairy production, eggs and poultry…
There are many ways to make the animals we raise for food (/food products) more comfortable, and to live objectively better lives. However, all of these come at a cost of increased pollution.
Then comes nitrogenous waste, and phosporous. Whilst feed composition is being improved continuously, and animals are being bred for better utilisation of nutrients, a large proportion will inevitably be excreted.
As you can see, producing one kilogram of beef protein requires 1.4kg of nitrogen, as well as 150g of phosphorous (a non-renewable resource at the commercial level). Other similar papers state that Poultry and Eggs are the most efficient use of resources for protein content, followed by milk and then pork.
Whilst protein is difficult to measure precisely, it cannot be denied that it plays a central role in any debate on animal product consumption. Below is a table of differences in input energy and CO2 emission compared to various protein sources (per 1kg protein).
Protein of plant origin is clearly less costly to produce, in terms of both finite resources (land, water, fossil fuels etc) and general external social costs (emissions — air, water and land). However, are there differences in the body’s utilisation of different types of protein? Correctly prepared, the differences seem to be limited.
So, as a concerned global citizen hoping to make a difference in a personal yet powerful way… diet is an important choice.
My personal stand point has been to go vegetarian for the last 2 or so years. In certain countries this was not only easy, but cheap and convenient. In other countries, this was a Sysophean task that eventually led me to grudgingly include chicken to my diet on occassions.
Egg laying chickens eventually get slaughtered for meat, and were raised more efficiently, so it appeared logical (as I still ate plenty of eggs) to make that concession. That thought process then led me to question my dairy consumption as well.
Vegetarians do not eat meat. Often because they don’t like the taste, are squeamish about slaughter or consider it morally wrong. I can appreciate the motivation of those types of vegetarians, but I feel I am some way removed from them.
I’ve worked on large scale cattle and sheep farms. I’ve shot/slaughtered and butchered animals. I’ve eaten many different types of animals in various culturally different countries. I am not one of the normal vegetarian camp, is I suppose my point. I will admit, it feels nice to abstain from meat on a moral level, and as an animal lover, but it is not my purpose.
My reason for vegetarianism is (/was) to reduce demand for items that I consider an inefficient use of our increasingly pressured agricultural (and ecological) systems. By being one of the slowly increasing number of vegetarians at events that require catering for, as well as personal buying habits, I hope to slowly decrease demand. “We can choose to be affected by the world or we can choose to affect the world.”
What has been bothering me, though, is the dairy side of it.
Milk is not harmless to the animals, nor is it good for the environment. The better the animal’s welfare, again, the higher the pollution. Just as old layers get slaughtered [2], so do spent cows. The bull calves, even if reduced in number by sperm selection procedures, still end up eaten. The quantity of feed and water required in the production of milk is huge, as are the technical problems with reducing emissions and redistributing their manure.
Poultry are not perfect, but they are usually housed in well contained buildings that have good ventilation and filtration (that could be improved further in future), and modern breeds of chicken have a feed conversion rate of 1.5 (1.5kg food : 1kg growth). This makes them, especially to someone who eats egg, a sensible dietary addition in moderation.
Some may note that fish are conspicuously missing from this discussion so far. “I’m a vegetarian that eats fish” has always seemed perverse to me, due to the incredible strain on the ocean fishery stocks. When I was (much) younger, I started to eat only farmed fish; then I learnt about the damage inshore fish farms have to the local environment and natural fish stocks. There are alternatives coming in the future that I would endorse, like the deep water geodesic dome farms, however whilst the current methods of fishing and farming are in place, I cannot emphasise enough how unsustainable wild or farmed fish is as a food source. Especially in the industrial quantities we consume it at. The differences in our oceans over even just my life time are appalling, and without better cooperation to reduce over-exploitation of shared fisheries… we will see many more collapses in future, as well as the removal of all large pelagic fish from the ecosystem.
And then we have an extra consideration… regionality. How far did your food travel to get to you? Global trade has been a blessing for the development of many countries, and rapid alleviation of poverty. However, this has led to some disturbing practices in our food production and consumption, where it is marginally cheaper to import items from the other side of the world than to produce locally. Leaving aside crops/livestock that are highly adapted to certain climates/areas, this is often down to comparative advantage — Ecuador may not be as good at raising chickens as Germany, but Germans are better at raising cattle than chickens, so best the Germans leave chicken production to others. So whilst the developed countries export high quality foodstuff for the high end market, many developing countries export us products we could produce ourselves happily… but just not as cheaply. This also happens at a domestic level as well, naturally. This leads to many obvious ecological issues, not just the vast amount of energy required to move them, but also the waste of food in transit and the chemicals required to keep them fresh.
Likewise, livestock fattening operations tend to be located near to ports, as they are so reliant on Soy imports from other parts of the world. A fact that has unleashed market forces that have led to vast swathes of rainforest being converted to farmland in South America. Some believe we are only a few percent points of conversion away from a tipping point that could see large areas in to savannah.
So, what is the diet of the future? What is the wise choice for us? What can we realistically expect the average person’s diet to look like in 50 years? What about in 20 years? What about the concerned person of today?
It is a question that is at once deeply personal, and yet open to empirical examination by our usual process of scientific and economic inquiry.
My personal current position, taking in to account my financial situation and other issues, is to continue “being a vegetarian”. However, I am cutting out dairy products such as milk/yoghurt/ice-cream (whilst tolerating it as a minor ingredient in bread etc, for now), and occasionally eat chicken if offered (but rarely purchase it). If I could afford to eat what I pleased, I think I would invest a lot more money in to plant based vegan/vegetarian products, especially tofu and milk replacements, and slowly move towards veganism as much as possible.
This seems to be a rational approach to a sustainable diet, which also allows social flexibility (an occasional bit of chicken is ok), whilst reducing my ecological footprint markedly.
The only problem is, if you say you are vegetarian, you get cheese. The only way to avoid that is to either explain this entire blog post, or declare yourself lactose intolerant (which I feel is somewhat disrespectful to those who are genuinely intolerant).
If you say you are a vegetarian, and are known as a vegetarian… eating some chicken at a social event may please the host, but will invariably turn the conversation in awkward directions. Again, short of explaining this whole blog post to all who seem interested (which has merit as an agent of change, but can get you a reputation as that guy), there are no simple ways to avoid a debate.
And then there is the extra issue of food waste. In our western developed countries, a phenomenal amount of food is carelessly wasted. In my current University there is an active community of “food sharing”, where concerned students visit supermarkets to collect their waste food before it is thrown away, and distributing it among fellow participants and students. If you save a steak from going in to a bin, are you at liberty to eat it, with an environmentally clean conscience? Leaving aside the health effects of red meat and animal rights ethics, speaking purely about what is good for the planet, is that rationally acceptable? What about cheese, or items made with dairy products?
What we really need is some catch all term that states someone eats consciously to help the environment. Wikipedia has an impressively comprehensive list of semi-vegetarian diets for you to try to label yourself with. I could declare myself a “Pollatarian dairy free” person. It hasn’t got the simplest ring to it… and ignores the core reason for the dietary change. Although it may clearly alert your future anxious dinner host what your allowed diet is, it needs something that promotes healthy and rational discussion. We need something that can grow holistically as evidence comes in from the world’s markets and ecosystems. Something that can be country, season and even region specific. A new rational and realistic way to structure our diet. One that you can shamelessly promote to the many concerned citizens of the world looking to reduce their impact on the creation of their grandchildren’s bleak future.
Sustainatarian … Gaian … Futuretarian
The name is merely an aesthetic detail. The important change comes from how we view our personal diet, and the acceptance that it must continue to change as new signals are returned to us from our ailing world.
Footnotes;
[1 = Here is the Co-Director and Co-Writer Kip Anderson introducing it to an EU committee, briefly outlining the main issue.]
[2 = A subject for future discussion, but one big issue in egg production is large depreciation in the laying hens over their life. By the end, their carcass value is almost non-existent. The meat is a bit harder, and the colour a bit different. In future, we should seek to utilise this meat better for a closed and waste free production system]
