Eating sustainably is easier than you think

The idea of eating sustainably can sometimes be daunting. But if you break down what a sustainable diet looks like and the benefits that come from it, you may find it’s a lot less hard than it seems. A sustainable diet includes mindful choices before consuming food to reduce your carbon footprint, conserve natural resources, improve your overall health, and much more.
A great example of a sustainable diet is a plant-based diet. This diet involves a significant reduction of meat and dairy from our everyday diets. Meat-lovers may wonder why it’s a good idea to reduce their meat intake. Well, not only does a meat-less diet have benefits for your body, but a big takeaway that most people gather from plant-based diets is the impact that animal produce has on our environment. Meat production requires much more resources than plant-based production and it can also lead to deforestation. In more simple words, the more the world’s population continues to depend on meat production for daily meals, the more damage we are doing to our environment. The world could look very different if we all had this type of dietary lifestyle.
Choosing a sustainable diet can also result in less water consumption as it takes much more water for meat production than plant-based production.
According to Footprint.org, “A simple cheese sandwich adds up to about 56 gallons of water. Add some sliced turkey, and the water footprint jumps to 148 gallons.”
Encouraging individuals to be more sustainable with their diets can allow us to prevent a future where water is seen as a luxury, as opposed to something easily accessible as it is now.
In addition to the many reasons why sustainable eating can help preserve our natural resources and the world that we know it to be, there’s also a great physical and mental aspect to a sustainable diet. Firstly, the ethical factors behind eating sustainably can boost the emotions of an individual and secondly, by choosing a sustainable diet individuals tend to be more mindful of what they consume, which can result in lifted moods.
In terms of how a sustainable diet can boost physical health, this can relate to reducing diseases that attack the body such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and in some cases even cancer. In most cases, food production that is rooted to the earth has numerous benefits for the body in both physical and mental aspects. When eating more legumes, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts, you are choosing to fill your body with nutrient filled ingredients. It’s also important that individuals who incorporate a plant-based diet make sure that their body is still receiving the right amount of protein which can be substituted from meat with items such as:
- Tofu
- Tempeh
- Plant based protein powders
A sustainable diet is surely not an overnight thing for everyone, especially those who are heavily reliant on being a part of their regular diet. However, if this is something you are interested in doing, a great tip would be to slowly start to decrease the amount of meat you cook with or order when you dine out. Additionally, the next time you’re in the supermarket, it’s always a good idea to stop and think before you add something to your cart. Think about the supplements for meat that you can use in your meals or what plant-based ingredients you can buy to support your body and the environment around you.