Food and Climate Boundaries: The Planet — Based Diet
In Austin we’re experiencing a winter weather crisis. Not being able to access food, living without power and having no clean water has many disordered. The ill-equipped infrastructure that simply can’t cope with the drastic change in our climate, has made me question: Does it take a crisis, that hits home, to make us realize that climate change has a very real impact on our food systems.
With 9 billion mouths to feed by 2050, and the growing desire for meat and dairy to do so, this means that agriculture around the world needs to step up production. But the problem is that meat and dairy account for almost 15% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions each year.
That’s roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today. (New York Times, 2019)
Climate change makes it harder to grow food and feed people safely. Also, since food is a globally traded commodity, climate events in one region raise prices and cause shortages in another.
In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission developed the world’s first scientific targets for healthy and sustainable food systems, including a “planetary health diet” with defined daily consumption ranges for each food group. This dietary pattern incorporates plant based foods and low amounts of animal based foods, refined grains, added sugars and unhealthy fats and is flexible for individual preferences. Eating a planet based diet needs to co-exist with limiting food waste, changing production standards and realizing that this is a global transformation in our food system, not just a local solution.
The below chart is what a planet based diet consists of:
My only hope is that we don’t all need to personally experience an-out-of-the-ordinary climate event to realize that simple shifts in how we eat will have a bigger footprint than what we assume may just be dinner tonight.
*For more information on what you can do, check out one of my favorite articles.
