What we eat has a big impact on the planet, but changing your diet can seem daunting and overwhelming: where do you start?
Food is part of culture, and we associate our interactions with friends and family with the foods we share. It’s time to start changing those foods, and normalizing smarter choices about what’s expected when we break bread together.
Consider switching some of your regular foodstuffs with more sustainable, local, or in season alternatives by choosing foods with lower carbon emissions. Learn more about the relationship of food and emissions here.
Here are some steps you could take:
- Replace dairy with the plant based alternative of your liking. Oat, rice, almond, and soy are widely available in many areas. You could even make your own and save money too. Here is a recipe for oat milk.
- Switch your (meat) burger with a meat alternative burger or falafel. Even doing it once in a while makes a difference at scale.
- Replace fruit and vegetables from far away with local grown and in season products. A season calendar similar to this one from BBC Good Food for your region can be very helpful.
Try a few and stick to the ones you enjoy. Consider prioritizing based on the environmental impact - some have more than others!
For an even bigger impact: talk about your switches and what you have learned or share this recommendation with your schools, favorite restaurants, employer, and others.
More conversation and more demand will make the food industry aware of our wishes as consumers. You can probably already see the effect today in your local supermarket: the number of veggie and vegan alternatives has grown tremendously. We vote with our wallets as well as our voices.