Future of Sustainable Food (4)

In the last three episodes, my focus was on Proteins, Food Waste and Food Waste prevention, al to nudge you to changing to a more circular healthy sustainable food system. Today I want to focus on the "Plant Forward" approach of our diets, supporting our personal health, and our environmental impact at the same time.

The right to suitable and appropriate food is a "human right" that most countries strive to perpetuate for all of their citizens. Food in general is a central and crucial part of our daily life. Food plays a pivotal role to our health and personal wellbeing. Food is also an important part of our culture and through food we express our creativity and celebrate our affiliation. We simply cannot overemphasise the importance of food in our daily lives and our societies.

Beyond affecting our personal health, our food choices also have long lasting impacts on our climate and environment. We cannot, and especially should not, pretend not to see all the scientific evidence, of how our food consumption and choices impact our planet.

A "Plant Forward" food approach is definitely one off the most efficient way's to increase our personal health and wellbeing and also to increase the overall availability of food for our global population, and simultaneously to decrease the negative environmental impact of inadequate food choices

The definition of "Plant Forward":

Plant Forward is "a style of cooking and eating that emphasises and celebrates, but is not limited to, foods from plant sources such as fruits and vegetables (produce), whole grains, legumes (pulses), nuts and seeds, plant oils, herbs and spices – and reflects evidence-based principles of health and sustainability”

Plant-forward does includes vegan and vegetarian diets, and any other eating pattern that focus on increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. but Plant Forward is not an eating pattern that excludes animal proteins. Plant Forward is an eating pattern that reduces the consumption of animal proteins in a sensitive, appropriate and moderate way to decrease the environmental impact of all animal proteins and their production processes and resource usages.

All humans are omnivores, meaning they can eat everything, both plant proteins and animal proteins. What and how much of each kind of proteins really are necessary for humans to consume and have a healthy eating pattern can scientifically and generally not be defined, because every human being is different, and everybody's nutrition patterns differ, depending on their personal health and wellbeing.

This is why i don't want to say that people who nourish themselves as vegans or vegetarians are any better than people who nourish themselves pescatarian or flexitarian, this needs to stay a personal human decision, that every person can make by himself.

My personal suggestion for a plant forward approach is definitely the flexitarian approach and therefore my focus goes much more to the advantages of a Plant Forward diet,

A Plant Forward diet inhales the best possible combination of supporting your personal health, and supporting our environment and our planet.

What can a Plant Forward approach do for us?

By committing to reduce, but not eliminating, the amount of animal proteins and increasing the amount of plant proteins, the overall ecological, environmental and increasing negative impact on our planet, mainly seen already in the increasing climate change, can be possibly brought to a slower growth.

Also this approach can and will have a positive impact on our personal health. and create a win-win situation for all human beings and our Planet, without forcing us towards eating patterns we cannot keep to.

Why does the consumption of animal proteins, have a negative impact on our environment?

The amount of resources like water and soil for crops, needed to produce or grow animal proteins are completely out of proportion compared to the amount of resources needed to produce or grow Plant proteins.

With the also extremely growing demand for food in general, due to the increasing amount of our global population, and the decreasing amount of healthy soil to grow our necessary resources and crops, we are expeditiously sliding into a negative vicious circle that is destroying our planet.

Animal agriculture is the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions on our planet, and responsible for up to 25 percent of all emissions worldwide.

For just 1 Kilogram of red meat, it needs approximately 10.000 liters of water resources and 25 Kilograms of crop feeds, which is huge!

The consumption of meat in general has increased 4 times over, during the past 50 years and the general consumption of meat lies around 320 million tonnes annually at the moment. Adding up the amount of resources needed to deliver on these 320 million tonnes of meat, is beyond our imagination, and hopefully this can be a wake up call for all of us.

Red meat production also has a 100 times bigger environmental impact than for example pea production.

So by reducing your intake of meat proteins by just 1 KG per week, each and everyone of us can already impact-fully contribute to a better environment.

I would like to finish with the following statement that according to my opinion can have the biggest impact, if we would just start acting now and as soon as possible;

We don't need a small amount of people performing meat reduction by changing to a vegan or vegetarian eating pattern, but we need millions and millions of people that are willingly reducing their meat consumption wherever and whenever possible.

In the next episode of "Future of Sustainable Food (5)" my focus will be on one of the best and most impactful plant forward products we have available on our planet, being BEANS.

PFJ / 07.07