Every plate of food you eat has an environmental impact, from the pollution caused by farming to the carbon footprint of delivering it to your kitchen. Fortunately, there are some simple steps you can take to help the planet.
1. Instead of using plastic bags, eat food at the supermarket: Plastic bags use fossil fuels in their production and often degrade into toxic particles that enter the ecosystem. Stop bringing your groceries home and instead eat your meals right in the checkout line.
2. Only eat cows that were fed the remains of other cows: If you eat beef, get it from a farm that recycles every remnant of the cow into cattle feed. It’s wasteful to just throw away all that cow gristle and cow brain.
3. Make sure your apples are “picked” and not “bulldozed”: Many growers simply bulldoze their orchards down and grab the apples off the ground. It’s much more sustainable to use the “picking method,” where apples are pulled off one by one and the tree is otherwise left intact.
4. Start having “Frackless Fridays”: Many people use fracked natural gas every time they turn on the stove. One day a week, flip the switch on your stove from “Fracking” to “No Fracking” to make sure none of the gas comes from fracking.
5. Avoid eating endangered fish unless you’re in a Michelin-starred sushi restaurant: Many fish species, like the bluefin tuna, are on the brink of extinction, and should never be eaten unless you’re dining at a really fantastic sushi bar. If you’ve snagged a table at Nobu or Morimoto, you owe it to yourself to let your palate run wild. What those chefs create isn’t simply a meal—it’s an edible work of art and the experience of a lifetime.
6. Potatoes are fine: Do you eat potatoes? Okay. Eating potatoes is okay.
7. Chew up all plastic and glass after the meal: It can take hundreds of years for plastic utensils, styrofoam containers, and glass bottles to decompose. You can speed up the process by grinding them to dust between your molars.
8. If you eat a lemur, compost the remains: It’s hard not to feel guilty after chowing down on a rare species like a ring-tailed lemur or a golden-crowned lemur. But don’t worry, any remaining scraps of meat can be composted into fantastic fertilizer for your garden. The planet will thank you!
