A double whammy, updating your health and minimizing your environmental impact via your fridge

When it comes to assessing (and reducing!) your impact, we encourage each environmentalist to look at all aspects of their life. Most of what we do consumes energy, and thus nearly everything we do can be put under the WYI microscope and this certainly includes eating. In fact, agriculture is a much more significant contributor to global emissions than you might think, and coupled with forestry it is a close second only to electricity and heat generation.1
When it comes to food, all calories are not created equal. You may have heard the intensive resources it takes to produce the meat on your table. Though it can be difficult to wrap your head around complex issues like land use, water use, and food supply, (see Tori’s great summary of the issues here) this article will focus on the greenhouse emissions of your fish, pork, dairy and beef. The carbon footprint (or carbon-equivalent) of various food items vary greatly even before you factor in transportation costs! We hope you are already buying local, but the following holds true for the food on your table regardless of how far it traveled to get there.