4: Food and the Planet

When it comes to food and the planet there is a lot of advice out there. But which food choices actually make a difference? And which ones turn out to be myths? In this episode, I give you the facts and numbers you need to make your food choices matter.

And I talk to Alice Zaslavsky, cook, writer, radio host, and author of the best-selling book “In Praise of Veg”. Because in the end, food is all about flavour.

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Useful Links

You can find the episode transcript here.

Sustainable Agriculture

Project Drawdown

Cook Book Tips

Vegan and Easy by Bianca Zapatka
In Praise of Veg by Alice Zaslavsky

Nutrition – Eating Healthy as a Vegan

Tips on nutrition by ProVeg International
Tips on nutrition by the NHS – The UK’s National Health Service

Resources

Factory Farming

Farm animals have feelings, too: Farm Animal Cognition – Linking Behavior, Welfare and Ethics (2019) by Nawroth et al., Frontiers in Veterinary Science
Factory Farming: What it is and why it’s a problem, The Humane League
Animal suffering: The curse of tail-docking: the painful truth about Italy’s pigs, The Guardian
Pollution: Drone Footage Reveals Massive, Toxic Manure ‚Lagoons‘ at Factory Farms, Vice
“Globally, 73% of all antimicrobials sold on Earth are used in animals raised for food”: Global trends in antimicrobial resistance in animals in low- and middle-income countries, (2019) by Van Boeckel et al., Science
“WHO has declared that [antimicrobial resistance] is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity”: Antimicrobial resistance, World Health Organization
More than 1.2 million death in 2019 attributed directly to antibiotic resistance: Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis, (2022) by the Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators, The Lancet
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares, Our World in Data
14% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock and fisheries alone: Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Our World in Data
99% of U.S. Farmed Animals Live on Factory Farms, Sentient Media

Organic Certifiaction Livestock Requirements

EU organic label
US organic label (USDA Organic)

Carbon Footprints of various Foods and Diets

Food: greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain Data from Poore & Nemecek (2018) via Our World in Data. Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2019) – “Food: greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-chain’ [Online Resource]
Carbon Footprint Calculator by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA)

Food Sustainability Myths

“[P]ackaging, transport, and retail contributes just 1 to 9%” to the carbon footprint of food: Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers, (2018) by Poore & Nemecek, Science
Water Footprints of Foods
Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint, Our World in Data

About this Podcast

How to Make a Difference is produced and hosted by Dr. Elisabeth Ignasiak. Music by Valentina Gribanova.

Listen to the Trailer for a preview and check out the other episodes!