Day 39 of 365 Days Of Low Carbon Living, a case-study in choosing climate-friendly meals.
The other day I was out for brunch with family. Everything on the menu looked delicious! How would I choose?
My main considerations were:
- amazing taste,
- something I probably won’t cook at home, and
- climate-friendly food.
Leaving out anything I could easily cook them at home meant skipping all the toast, muesli, porridge and straight egg (with or without bacon) dishes.
Climate-friendly ruled out all the beef and lamb dishes. I was pleasantly surprised that only a quarter of the all-day menu contained been or lamb – so that, unfortunately still left me with a choice of 16 dishes.
I decided that chicken and seafood weren’t to my liking that meal. Some of the seafood also came from far away and who knows how the chicken was grown – so avoiding them would probably be pretty climate-friendly too.
That left egg, vegetarian and vegan dishes.
One of the things I have noticed about restaurants in recent years is the tendency to serve two eggs for breakfast. Why? Does everyone want – or need – two eggs? Even though I know two eggs is a standard serve, I find it too much when combined with all the other ingredients that go into a restaurant breakfast or brunch meal.
So now I had whittled my choice down to only a few dishes, the choice was much easier: focus on amazing taste.
That was how I came to choose the dish pictured above. It comprised pinto beans (fritters), goat’s curd, avocado, corn, tomato, capsicum, herbs and lime juice – and a berry and watermelon juice to wash it down. (It helped that one of our party had tried it the day before and proclaimed it delicious.)
Why?
Eating a plant-based diet is better for our climate: eating less meat means adding less heat to our world. It is also now widely recommended for our health.
It is fresh real food.
- Highly processed food uses a lot of energy and packaging. Nearly all energy for industrial processes and materials for plastics currently comes from coal or fossil oil and gas – which are the main sources of global warming.
- Processed food also frequently contains palm oil. Unfortunately, palm oil is bad for the climate. That’s because it is mainly grown where tropical rainforests have been illegally cleared by burning. Such big fires cause massive amounts of climate damage, air pollution, and loss of biodiversity and nutrients as well as upsetting water cycles.
Most of the food is seasonal. This means that it is less likely to have been in climate-controlled storage for long or to have travelled long distances, both of which are currently likely to be fuelled by coal or fossil oil or gas and thus damaging to the climate.
If all the food had been local and organic it would have been even better.
- The menu did not mention that the ingredients were local, possibly because of the amount of ingredients. In any case, the avocados and pinto beans almost certainly were not local.
- No mention of ‘organic’ means it probably isn’t.
Eating and drinking in-house uses crockery, glassware and metal cutlery. In contrast:
- plastic lasts forever and is usually made from fossil gas, methane, a powerful and quick-acting gas that damages our climate from mining to end-use
- single-use products cause problems with wastage and ‘waste’ (think lost resources, space, pollution, disruption of local environments…).
Challenge
Next time you are eating out:
- choose a plant-based, climate-friendly meal
- eat in-house
Join me!
Any change or challenge is easier if you have company along the way.
So let’s embark on this journey together.
- Read my blog every day for ideas, thoughts and experiences for living a lower carbon lifestyle, more in harmony with nature – while also adapting to the consequences of our damaged climate.
- Subscribe to get posts direct to your inbox.
- Commit to taking action yourself.
- Add a comment to let me know you’re joining in the effort to turn around our world so it can remain liveable – and what your experiences are.
- Share with others my posts and what you’re doing – our efforts, progress, experiences and challenges – on Facebook, on Twitter, in conversations with friends, on talkback radio and in letters to the editor.
A problem shared is a problem halved. We’re all affected by the changes to our world so we need to be all in on the action!
Till next time…