Eco-Friendly Food

The consumption of food causes greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in the various stages of the life cycle of food production (Kramer et al., 1999). Conflicting views make it difficult for me as a consumer to make environmentally conscious shopping choices. I will in this blog entry try to find out how my diet can have the lowest environmental impact.

In the article written by Kramer et al. the calculations of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O emissions related to Dutch food consumption are presented. Production, processing and distribution of the consumed food are included in the calculation of GHG emission. CO₂ emissions were mainly related to the use of energy, CH₄ from animal husbandry and N₂O emissions from fertilizers (Kramer et al., 1999).

When shopping for food bearing the following points in mind will lead to a reduction in GHG emissions:

• Buying locally produced products
• Limiting meat consumption by substituting with other protein food products (e.g. eggs, nuts and pulses)
• Substituting glasshouse produced food with foods grown on the open field 

Kramer et al. did not include the nutrition value of the food products in the calculations of GHG emissions, whereas an article written by Wallén et al. discusses the possibilities for a Swedish consumer to make sustainable dietary choices leading to a substantial decrease in GHG emission.

A sustainable diet is here defined, as a diet providing nutritional needs in combination with minimising greenhouse gas emissions (Wallén et al., 2004). The article emphasizes that it is often assumed that animal foods cause more GHG emission than vegetable foods. However, results show that imported vegetables can lead to greater carbon dioxide emissions than a meal containing domestically produced meat. It is therefore important where and how foods are produced (Wallén et al., 2004).

Overall, I can conclude there are several factors to bear in mind in order to have a more environmentally friendly diet. As a consumer it is possible to make environmentally correct shopping choices to lower the environmental impact but seen at a larger scale changing food production processes is more important to substantially decrease GHG emissions (Wallén et al., 2004).