Discussion Question 5

As a vegetarian, environmental impact factors into every food choice I make. This isn't necessarily true for every vegetarian, as there are many reasons to choose to forego meat in one's diet, but for me, the main concern is lowering my impact on the earth. This is the main consideration I make about food on a daily basis, but after seven years of not eating meat (and on-and-off not eating fish- currently off, and hopefully permanently) it's second nature to me. I don't have to make a conscious effort to sacrifice meat anymore because it's all I know. So recently I've been trying to take a new step toward greening my food choices. I try to eat locally as much as possible, but I've found that it's extremely difficult to know where your food comes from on a college campus. Nothing is labeled like at the grocery store, and the people serving food at TDR, the Tav, and other eateries on campus tend to have no idea themselves. Another consideration I could make would be to eat only foods that are currently in season in America (for example, no grapes from Chile in the winter) but it is similarly very difficult to know this or choose this from the limited options on campus.


I honestly have no idea what item that I've eaten in the past fews days had the greatest environmental impact. I would imagine that the banana I had with peanut butter and toast yesterday for breakfast incurred a large carbon footprint due to transportation costs, since most bananas are grown in tropical regions, specifically Central and South America. Perhaps it's the more processed food items, such as the tortilla my burrito was wrapped in for dinner last night, since processed foods require more energy and resources to produce. 


It is becoming increasingly more apparent to me how important it is to know where your food comes from, since I recognize how big an impact food consumption can have on the environment, but also how difficult it is to find this out on a college campus. I hope that when I move off campus next year and reduce my meal plan and buy and prepare more of my own meals I can make more conscious decisions to eat local and unprocessed foods.