Let’s think about food. Do you know where your food comes from and how it’s produced? What about when you’re on tour? The reality is, most of the time most of us don’t know. And we often have less predictable cooking and eating routines when we’re on tour.
There are lots of good reasons to ponder the source of our food. Nasty agricultural practices spread toxins, damage land and waterways, hurt our kin (the other creatures and beings we live among), and our own personal health. Plus food transport and waste are major contributors to global heating.
So what can be done? Probably the single biggest thing you can do personally is to reduce the amount of meat (especially red meat) you eat. Meat production contributes at least 23% of the world’s greenhouse gases: more than all cars, trains and planes combined. Just replacing the carbon-heavy beef on your plate with chicken, you can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half. And if you go a step further and take into account what beef-producing land could have otherwise been, like a carbon-absorbing, oxygen-producing forest, this research paper estimates the ‘carbon cost’ of beef is 73 times higher than soy.
