29th April 2024
For a change of emphasis, I plan over the next few weeks to look at some of the things we do as a household to live more sustainably. Maybe what we do might prompt some thoughts for you, and maybe you will have some ideas to share as well.
I follow a vegan diet and as I am the main cook, all home cooking is vegan!
Vegan diets have a smaller carbon footprint and cause less damage to the climate – research suggests somewhere in the region of 75% less! The food grown for vegan diets uses less water and less land – largely because of the significant amounts of land and water needed to grow feed for farm animals. Needing less land has two benefits – first the ability to grow more food for a growing population, and second the ability to set aside more farm land for rewilding and restoring levels of biodiversity.
I also chose a vegan diet on the grounds of animal welfare. Even eating a vegetarian diet involves the slaughter of young animals – principally male chicks and male calves – as well as the likelihood that the females will have stressful lives of repeated birthing.
I can see that for some people raising low intensity livestock can be a key part of a farm’s ecology, and that eating small amounts of meat and dairy would be consistent with that.
Further reading –
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-opportunity-costs-food
What would happen to the cows is we all went vegan? – https://greentau.org/2022/09/23/the-green-tau-issue-53/comment-page-1/
Tips for switching to a vegan diet – https://greentau.org/2021/10/12/eco-tips-11/
The Green Tau 