Food and the Environmental Impact

In this day and age there are several criteria that we consider before eating a meal, snack, or simply desert. We tend to eat what “we like” and “tastes good” when there is a choice. Yet, one must always eat healthy to keep up with their nutrition intake. So what do I consider when making my food choices? My priority is the number of calories in the food and the nutrition in the food. I like to keep up with my calorie intake and not over consume calories. Second of all, I consider the price. If you can find a sub for $3 and $6, who wouldn’t choose the cheaper one? This debate actually came up during my health and nutrition class. Although very unhealthy, so many people purchase and consume McDonalds. Their price is appealing; if you can buy a “healthy” meal for $10 and a McDonalds meal for $5, of course people will pick cheap over expensive. This is specifically comparing the nutritional content and the price. Now, going into the environmental considerations, I personally do not take these specific criteria into consideration. This would probably eliminate most animal products. From my knowledge and research (through my health and nutrition class) I have learned that one can consume enough protein per day without consuming any animal products. In fact, currently Americans tend to over consume protein (as so many people favor meat over vegetables etc). Hence, one may assume that becoming vegetarian or vegan will decrease the protein intake. To conclude the first answer to the first question, I do not consider any environmental factors when making my food choice. I eat what I like and what is good for my health.

Considering what I had in the past few days, I can think of the noodle soup that I had at the Vietnamese restaurant. It was their traditional egg noodle soup and included pork and shrimp. According to the readings there are much more calculation that must be considered when calculating the environmental impact not just the food itself, but the “opportunity cost” in economics term. Having said this, animal products have the biggest environmental impact and I conclude that this noodle soup with pork and shrimp had the biggest environmental impact. Not to mention I have been trying to eat healthy for the past couple of days so this was one of the rare times I consumed animal products.

This brings up the last topic I would like to discuss. This relates back to the environmental impact from various foods we consume. From our readings we can say that the animal products have one of the biggest environmental impacts hence there are many people who are vegetarian or vegan for that reason. However, there are so many cultures that have cultural traditional foods (such as the Vietnamese noodle soup I mentioned) and many of these foods include animal products. If we are going to eliminate animal products or prevent too much consuming of animal products, where are these cultural and traditional foods go? Make them disappear and lose part of their culture? I think this is an interesting topic that did not come up in the readings. It is true that so many of these dishes are available in vegetarian versions. However, this lacks in the originality and loses the value of the traditional food. I think we should continue this discussion as this course is an international environmental politics class and is relevant to our discussion. What will happen to the various cultures?