Food Choices

I agree with Quinn and the others that making food choices for the benefit of the environment is extremely difficult in college due to cost and lack of knowledge about the subject.

Recently however due to what I have learned in this class and others, when making food choices, I have been increasingly taking into account environmental considerations. From a trophic perspective in the Pollan article and other sources, it is clear that eating a secondary or tertiary consumer such as an animal is at least ten times more energy intensive than eating a primary consumer such as a plant. While sometimes it can be rude to disrupt social norms at family dinners or when others have prepared food for guests, when I am in sole control of my food choices, I often try to make food choices that will be the least bad and most efficient for the environment. Affordability and convenience are also factors in these decisions. While this 'fair weather' foodie perspective may seem as though it lacks courage, I feel relatively new at understanding the true impacts of food and hope to develop more in the future.

I think the food with the greatest environmental impact I have eaten was probably the top ramen packet I had for dinner last night. In the process of its contents being processed, plastic wrapped, and transported around the globe, it likely made an enormous environmental impact. It is extremely difficult for college student to eat healthily let alone sustainably given the time pressures of class, work, and other commitments along with the high price of healthier fare. I hope that we can start to change this in an effort to green our agricultural system and our eating habits.