Today we are back with my most favourite topic: FOOD! This post is going to look at seasonal and local produce, our perceptions of what is “seasonal” and whether eating with the seasons is better for the environment. Enjoy! Our supermarkets today allow us to purchase food products from all over the world. This incorporates …
Category Archives: Food
Smart Shorts III: Can eating Quorn help you save the planet?
Have you ever sat down for dinner, started tucking into a Quorn lasagne, escalope or the best of the best (in my opinion) the Quorn nugget, and wondered to yourself… What is this? Well, I have! So to answer my own question (and hopefully satisfy your curiosity too), this blog post will cover what Quorn …
Continue reading “Smart Shorts III: Can eating Quorn help you save the planet?”
Land sharing or land sparing? Conservation vs food production
The land-sharing land-sparing framework (LSLS) addresses the issue of providing food for an ever-growing population, whilst maintaining or improving biodiversity (Kremen, 2015). The first of the two ideas is land-sharing, which combines conservation and wildlife-friendly farming practices within the same area of agricultural land (Phalan et al., 2001). England’s Environmental Stewardship policy promotes this strategy …
Continue reading “Land sharing or land sparing? Conservation vs food production”
How does stress affect how you eat?
This post is going to cover some of the research on how stress affects eating patterns and the types of food of which people love to stress eat. I am not a dietician or an expert in this field so please do not take my word for it – read the research yourself if it …
Smart Shorts III: Foraging Frenzy
Foraging describes the harvest of non-cultivated “wild” goods, also known as non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Such goods may contain wild animals, fish and wild plants such as stinging nettles, wild garlic and wild mustard – the focus of this essay is on the latter. The practice, at least in people, is as old as the …
Veganuary: going cold tofu on meat and dairy
Okay, so I thought that perhaps a nice way to summarise what I had learned about veganism so far in previous blog posts would be to do it for myself. And what better time than the glorious period of failed resolutions that is January? I joined the approximately half a million people (since 2014) who …
Continue reading “Veganuary: going cold tofu on meat and dairy”
Sustainability and veganism III: the economy and society
Veganism is supported by many as a way to increase the sustainability of our food system, all the way from production to consumption. The dietary and environmental implications of this have already been discussed (see part I on nutrition, and part II on environmental impacts), but such a huge change in the way we see, …
Continue reading “Sustainability and veganism III: the economy and society”
Sustainability and veganism II: the environmental impacts of diet
According to a study by Oxford University, going vegan is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on the planet (The Guardian, 2019). Our current food system causes biodiversity loss (through deforestation of woodlands for pasture land), competition for land, water and energy with other industries, and greenhouse gas emissions (Peters et al., 2016). …
Continue reading “Sustainability and veganism II: the environmental impacts of diet”
Sustainability and veganism I: nutrition and health
What is veganism? “Food consumption is an environmentally significant behaviour, accounting for around 20-30% of Western greenhouse gas emissions” – Beverland, Wahl & De Groot, 2015 Veganism has been suggested as a solution to many of our sustainability problems; including climate change, biodiversity loss and antibiotics resistance. As such, over 1% of the UK over-15 …
Continue reading “Sustainability and veganism I: nutrition and health”
What makes a sustainable diet?
Sustainability and diet Sustainability is one of those environmental “hot topics”, which is so often talked about but rarely specifically explained. According to the Brundtland definition (presented in the Brundtland Report of 1987 to the UN General Assembly), sustainable development is: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future …
