Cradle to grave...farm to fork are expressions used to describe a new wave of activity in the environmental sciences. The technical term is life cycle analysis. For any product or process, all of the inputs and outputs and their environmental impacts are considered in the analysis. This allows for someone to take a comprehensive look at how we impact planet earth. Have you ever thought about the ripple effect one item in one meal has on our environment. I took the opportunity to research what the impacts were for
a 3 oz. serving of beef sirloin steak. Three ounces is the USDA suggested serving size for an adult (so why do restaurants serve 8 or more ounces in a serving?). I have created an Environmental Facts label based on the Nutrition Facts label that is currently required to be on all food. The beef provides 7% of our daily requirement for energy but it takes 24 times as much energy to produce those 146 kcal in the beef...most of it from fossil fuel sources. It took 2,000 gallons of water to produce 3 ounces of meat and meat production does produce greenhouse gases that contribute to the warming of our planet. Production of meat can also acidify and add nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus (eutrophication) to lakes and streams polluting fresh water. These are just a few of the environmental impacts. All modern food production impacts our planet to different degrees. If consumers were given this information, would it change their eating habits? Let's do it and find out!
3 comments:
Or we could just go back to putting that steak on the table ourselves from start to finish and see what happens that way. A girls just gotta have a steak every now and then!
I know you had talked about doing this before, I think we would all be surprised by just how much energy it takes to put food on our tables.
Great idea dad, and thanks for the post!
Natalie
Scary but I have already heard these figures. I am making (previous to this post) one of my New Year's resolutions to take in less meat and more fruits and veggies. It couldn't hurt. Make the meat more of a complement to the veggies instead of the other way around. Don't worry, I'm not going vegetarian on anyone out there!
Benj
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