I have studied and been actively engaged with the relationship between the environment, climate change and food since mid 2015, first simply reading on my own, then joining a Danish forest preservation NGO by the name Forests of the World, where I in 2016 developed a campaign advocating a reduction in our meat consumption. After the implementing the campaign I have done some more research and made a Danish language blog with content equal to a some 120 pages word document. While still in Copenhagen in late spring 2018 and now when I have started travelling, first touring Denmark, then going southwards to Berlin, where i currently stay, I have been doing presentations called “The Climate Friendly Diet”. This article is based on these presentations, excluding, though, the part on foraging, which I have assigned a full introductory article later on this blog. I will be happy to do this presentation in your community centre, café, company or elsewhere, and perhaps to team up with someone you know, who is knowledgeable on the topic, as I have done the previous times.

Climate Change and Economic Sectors in Perspective 

I think we generally emphasize too strongly the virtue of specialization. Of course it has value, but in order to prevent a catastrophic level of global warming and depletion of resources, we need individuals and all relevant actors – families and communities, the political system and the business world – to take a broad approach to these problems. I heard a speaker say, that global warming is not due to a lack of electric cars, it is due to our meat consumption. This view, I think, is arrived at by estimations of the greenhouse gas emissions from the animal agriculture itself, combined with its necessary overlap with the energy and transportation sectors. In this way, for instance, the documentary Cowspiracy has advocated the view that global warming is mainly due to our animal agriculture. Though animal agriculture is a very important contributor to global warming, a fair and more widely accepted estimate is that animal agriculture is not responsible for more than 50% of our combined greenhouse gasses, but more likely 17-32. This anti-animal agriculture perspective, therefore provides a tunnel vision. If we solved the problems of relying on fossil fuels for energy and transportation, then that would reduce the emissions coming from the animal agriculture´s overlap with these sectors.

THEREFORE: EVERY SECTOR IS CRUCIAL, WHEN IT COMES TO COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE, AND WE ALL NEED TO CHANGE OUR FOOD HABITS AS WELL AS SHIFT OUR MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION TO THOSE DIESEL OR GASOLINE FUMING CARS WITH BICYCLES, PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION AND/OR ELECTRIC CARS, AND WE NEED TO STOP FLYING OR DO IT MUCH LESS, FOR INSTANCE 3100 MILES A YEAR AS SUGGESTED BY THE GERMAN NGO ATMOSFAIR. FAR TOO MANY NGO WORKERS ARE PROUD TO DRIVE DIESEL CARS, AND FAR TOO MANY VEGANS OR VEGETARIANS PRIDE THEMSELVES OF SAVING THE PLANET FROM CLIMATE CHANGE AS THEY TAKE LONG DISTANCE FLIGHTS WHICH EMIT JUST AS MUCH AS THEY AVOIDED EMITTING SPENDING THE LAST YEAR NOT EATING ANY MEAT OR ANIMAL PRODUCTS.

Another perspective that i will not go into detail with here, is the constant attempts to deny the problems or to claim the responsibility must be with the political system or with businesses or whichever segment of society we are not involved in ourselves.

THE RESPONSIBILITY IS UNIVERSAL! BOTH INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES, COMMUNITIES, BUSINESSES  AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM MUST CONTRIBUTE SIGNIFICANTLY 

Climate Friendly Diet Tools

Even from the slightly more narrow perspective of our food system, it is important to take a broad approach on things, since we all contribute in numerous ways, not in one specific way. If you can handle no more today, then make an effort to reduce your meat consumption and the amount of food you waste, and then read the rest another day. Meat consumption and food waste are the too most important factors in terms of   

Picking the Climate Friendly Food Items

One significant approach to your climate friendly diet is the to read articles and use online tools that have calculated the emissions from a range of food items. Different online tools to estimate your greenhouse gas emissions exist. I find the one made by Unilever, which I have only now in a Danish version called CO2-beregneren, useful. There are others in English and in many other languages. You can also do a bit of your own research, especially if you are still skeptical.

The most extensive and systematic, globally oriented scientific article I know is called “Systematic review of greenhouse gas emissions For different fresh food categories”. It provides estimates of global averages of a large number of food items and also orders these foods into.the categories with the most emissions. 

I will provide you here with some of the most important findings: In general meat is the food category with the most emissions, then comes milk products, and after these two comes all plant products, be it grains, fruits, vegetables or legumes.

Meat products differ though, and, unless you are into, (internationally) unusual treats such as bison with an emission level per kg of 60kg, the more frequently eaten ruminant meats, beef and lamb, are those from which the highest level of emissions come with emission levels of 27kg and 26kg of emissions per kg respectively.

Fish vary extremely, but on a global average sole, turbot, anglerfish and hake are found within the very high 9.7 – 21 kg/kg range. The most important factors in terms of emissions from fish are the method of catching and the storage requirements (energy for freezing or cooling). This means that a better approach could be to choose fish that are caught close to the harbor, and sold fresh by the local fisherman. This means the lowest requirements for fuel for the ship and energy for storage. 

Next, from a top to bottom perspective review of emissions from food items comes butter and cheese with emission levels of 9.0 and 8.5, respectively. 

If you reduce your consumption of these foods: beef, lamb, fishes such as sole, turbot, anglerfish and hake, butter and cheese, then you have taken a significant step in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from your diet.

The problem with milk products is the ratio of milk needed to any milk product. For a hard cheese an estimated 10 kg´s of milk is needed to produce 1 kg of cheese. It is this excess use of milk that make the emissions from milk products go up. This also means that milk itself is at a quite low emission level, and that more soft cheeses, such as cottage cheese, also have low emission levels.

All plant products, be it fruits vegetables, grains, nuts, legumes or herbs, all emit very little greenhouse gasses compared to most milk products and especially to most meat items.

Food Waste

Reducing your food waste is second most important thing you can do to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from your diet. Some 25-33% of all food produced never reaches a human stomach, but is instead discarded in trash bins or otherwise lost. This waste comes at a great cost to sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions, since we then have to produce all that food in much greater quantities. But not only is there an environmental cost. This is a cost to households too, and a study has estimated that, on average, Danish families waste the equivalent of 1.560 dollars each year, because they have no significant approach to avoiding food waste. And here is one of the several reasons why the responsibility is much broader than simply that of the government´s: In my country at least, (Denmark), households are the one sector with the most waste, responsible for 36% of all food waste. Second is retail with 23%. When it comes to food waste, it is obvious that individual consumers and families have a great responsibility. The government cannot fine us for not eating everything on our plate, or not allow us to by food we are not going to eat, because we buy food for the whole weekend, even though we have plans of visiting some friends during the exact same days, or believe we cannot eat the same as we ate yestserday! We can!

So what to do about our food waste? The things needed to be done are quite basic: Plan your meals. Be creative with leftovers which can be used for lunch packs, put in the fridge and eaten the next day, (yes you can eat the same food two days in a row!), or it can be frozen and eaten at a later time. Make sure you don´t buy more than you think you can eat. Be guided by your senses rather than expiration dates, when deciding whether a food item is still edible. Buy “ugly” foods. You can also dumpster dive, take the food thrown out by grocery stores.  

Eating organic produce

Since I approach the topic very broadly here, my presentation of the different topics will be introductory. (Honestly, It´s Saturday evening and I want to be done and take the night off). There is a number of other things that you can do and consider. Eating organic produce does increase the level of greenhouse gas emissions, but this can easily be countered by eating less meat, wherefore it should not make you worried.

Eating in accordance with the Seasons

Eating in accordance with the local seasons is also greatly beneficial in terms of lowering your emission level, since it lowers the need for transportation and energy for storage or warming of greenhouses. In fact, warming up greenhouses in order to cultivate tomatoes or or cucumbers, requires so much energy that the emission level for Danish locally grown and bought tomatoes or cucumbers grown in greenhouses emit more than the same vegetables imported from Italy or Spain to Denmark. There are plenty of useful websites and articles about eating in accordance with the seasons. Since this is a place specific issue, it does not make sense for me to go into the details of local seasons here.

Worry the least about transportation

In general, the transportation aspect of climate conscious food consumption is the least significant. Transportation is responsible for totally 11% of the emissions from your food, but only 4% of these are from the transport from the country of origin to the importing country. The 11% is transportation needed before the product is finished, so-called  upstream transportation from sources such as ingredients needed to make the product, fertilizers, fodder and seeds and the distribution of the product or produce. Therefore, the less synthetic the product you buy, the more climate friendly, due to both to the requirements for production and for transportation. Fresh produce is also much better for your health than synthetic foods.

Bypassing the agricultural industry by growing your own or foraging

If you consider yourself more than simply a consumer, you can actively engage in a more climate friendly food culture by by-passing the agricultural industry, not to abandon it completely but to lower its impact. You can do this by providing for yourself, either by growing your own, which I, as a roving writer, is not the right one to tell you about, or by foraging, which, perhaps disappointingly, I will also not touch upon in this article. This is not out of neglect though, on the contrary, but because I will provide a full article soon with an introduction to foraging. Also, read some more of the articles of this blog, and you will see that foraging is one of its main themes.

Wrapping up

It´s 9pm on a Sarturday and it´s Christopher Street Day, gay pride day in Berlin, and I want to wrap up now and at least provide a simple figure of it all, including the things I have not touched upon in the article, and have a look at events on the street. Here, therefore, is a quick overview of what kind of food culture is low emission, mid level and high emission:

Low emission foods Medium emission High emission
PlantsDairyMeat
WIld food is zero emission produced is, relative to wild food, high level.
Self-sufficiency is low levelindustrially produced high level
Eaten lowwasted high
In season lowout of season high
Freshprocessed
Localimported
DryRefrigeratedFrozen
Not packagedPackaged
Rawfriedbaked