Environmentally Sustainable Eating Choices

Developing good and healthy eating choices helps in building a healthy planet that is environmentally sustainable. Following are some of the points to be considered to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions that may have a long-lasting impact on this planet’s biodiversity:

Eating meat in moderation or occasionally may help in environmental sustainability.

Eating more plants than livestock saves huge amounts of space, water, and feed and limits greenhouse gas emissions as livestock alone generates about 15% of man-made gases. Further live stocks are fed with antibiotics in their diets which is another contaminant to the environment.

The cutback on the meat from Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) may have serious health complications.

Consuming more varieties of plant-based food replenishes all the required nutrients. These foods can be replaced with the plant-based menu by including lentils in one’s diet rich in fiber, protein, and other nutrients. They also require less water, are cheaper, and are easier to be grown.

Eating raw foods such as carrots or onion is environmentally more sustainable than cooked foods as food preparation generates greenhouse gases.

Reduce eating cheese or cheese-based foods as it alone can generate much carbon dioxide.

Feeding on lower trophic groups such as seafood benefits people, nature, and climate as they emit fewer carbon gases.

It is shown that around 30% of food produced is wasted, which will eventually have undesired repercussions on the environment. Therefore freezing or reusing prepared food or cooking in the right amounts with no wastage is always encouraged.

Home-grown foods or organic produce should be encouraged as it has fewer amounts of chemical fertilizers that are environmentally hazardous and are also healthy and cheaper.

Always opt for a roundtable on sustainable palm oil (RSPO) certified oils as they approve of sustainable production.