This is a nice video on eating locally, but how can you talk about reducing our food footprint without talking about how much more energy goes into putting meat vs. vegetables on your plate?
Shipping food via truck is actually a fairly energy efficient way to distribute food, at least when you compare it to the energy required to grow corn and soy, harvest and process it, feed it to animals (along with tons of water), then kill the animals, process them into meat, and then ship and refrigerate the meat until it gets cooked at home. Making food from animals is inherently less energy efficient than making food from vegetables—it’s built into the laws of physics.
Eating less meat and more vegetables will do a lot more to “save the planet” than simply buying food that’s traveled a shorter distance. Especially considering that all the energy involved in refrigerating the food at the market, driving to the market and getting it home, refrigerating it at home, etc. is the same either way.
I’m all for eating local whenever possible, and for eating as few processed foods as possible, but if you’re trying to make your diet more sustainable, eating less meat has to a big part of your strategy.
