Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Calculate the environmental footprint of your food
When you are starving, filling the stomach is the first priority, which means calory to produce energy to survive. In the meantime, there are quite a number of fortunate people in the world, mainly in developed countries, who can afford to choose what to buy and eat. If you are one of the fortunate people, what are your priorities when you do grocery shopping, the appetite, price, taste, or health? Each factor is tied to your emotion, wallet, tongue, and body respectively, and the decision is probably made to compromise these factors. But there is another aspect you may want to look at your diet. The environmental footprint. For example, a banana is filling, tasty, healthy, and inexpensive. But where was it produced, how was it packaged, how long was it transported, and how much of the banana is wasted? Indeed, unless you grab a banana from the tree yourself and eat it entirely including the skin, you’ll accumulate a lot of carbon footprint to consume a banana. And you also need to take how much water and fertilizer was used to grow the fruit into consideration. They all add up. Surprisingly, the whole food system accounts for nearly 20 to 40% of all human-produced greenhouse gas emissions. But such figures aren’t labeled on most of the food.
Now, here is a calculator that measures how much impact your choice of food has on the health of the planet. Indeed, it seems to be the time to worry about the health beyond ourselves.
Enjoy reading the article and try the calculator to find the environmental footprint of your choice of food.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210204-calculate-the-environmental-footprint-of-your-food
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