Eat More Sustainably: 7 Foods to Avoid
We’ve all been there. You’re sitting at a restaurant, wondering if a delicious menu item is worth its environmental toll. You could’ve sworn your friend told you that eating Chilean Sea Bass is okay in small portions, but someone else told you to never even think about it again.
Environmental effects of consuming certain foods are measured against a variety of factors. These multifaceted considerations include food production, preparation, packaging, transportation, cooking and retail. You’ll find that organizations may rank foods as higher and lower risk depending on how far those foods travel to reach your plate, as well as how seasonal their consumption is in a given region.
For these reasons and so many more, consumers have difficult choices to make! To keep things simple, here are 7 foods we’ve researched that are (at this moment) items to think twice about before ordering.
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Lamb
- Butter
- Beef (especially Cheeseburgers)
- Farmed Salmon
- Potatoes
- Veal
- Asparagus
So now you know what you should NOT eat, but what SHOULD you eat? The World Wildlife Fund has a fantastic guide here for learning about how to eat in a sustainably friendly way.
Do you have a food that you always avoid? Do you have methods to track the carbon footprint of your diet? Let us know your favorite green foodie by using the hashtag #rise4earth!
Sources
- 10 Common Climate Damaging Foods
- High-Fructose Corn Syrup: Not So Sweet for the Planet
- Diet Changes Cut U.S. Climate Change Pollution Equal to 57 Million Cars Over Past Decade
- The top 10 foods with the biggest environmental footprint
- Two Studies Reveal Facts About Fast Food Waste
- Six Tips to Help You Eat More Sustainably