How to Choose and Select Your Foods to Help Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Many people discuss insulation, lighting fixtures, appliances for cooking, heating and cooling, cars, etc when considering ways to help reduce your carbon footprint on the environment. In addition to all those things, there are food choices which can help you reduce your carbon footprint further.

Instructions

• 1

  Avoid beef, lamb and pork unless it is produced in traditional, sustainable ways. It takes 29 times more water to produce 1 pound of beef than processing 1 pound of chicken and 50 times more water than producing 1 pound of soybean. Also 4 liters of oil is required to produce beef. This is a carbon footprint 2 1/2 times larger than that of chicken.

• 2

  Stay at home and cook for yourself and the family. As much as 14% of food goes to waste in restaurants and up to 40% is not eaten. In addition, the light, cooling, heating, cooking and the operations of the restaurant overall cost more that cooking the same meal at home.

• 3

  Avoid bottled soft drinks. Soft drinks contain carbonated water and sugar and they are sold in plastic bottles. Carbonated drinks have carbon dioxide dissolved in them and during manufacturing and consuming them CO2 is released into the atmosphere. To make these plastic bottles 20 to 30 barrels of crude oil are used. And if these bottles are not recycled they are dumped into landfills where they will remain for the next million years! If they are incinerated they release greenhouse gases. By consuming these we are even affecting our body - as the acidity causes out teeth to dissolve and reduces our bone mass due to dissolution in the carbonic acid.

• 4

  Eat locally produced and seasonal vegetables. They are fresh and carry the minerals of the area required for the survival of the organisms in the area, hence will nurture you too. Fresh foods that are shipped into an area are stored in large freezers or grown in greenhouses. Both these alternatives require large amounts of energy. So does importing fruits and vegetables. These processes produce a footprint 9 times larger than consuming food produced locally and in the season.