The more you eat, the fewer emissions you toot!
Well… that’s not exactly how it works. It’s more like if you replace beef with beans, then the cows that didn’t have to be bred for slaughter will not have pooped and released methane, and the truck that would have carried the beef from (factory) farm to the supermarket would not have made the trip, because the demand for beef would have fallen.
There are many delicious ways to do one’s bit to reduce emissions. If I’ve made even the slightest impact on this site, it’s been with screeds, rants, and political polemics about climate change.
Now, I want to turn my attention to practical things – like eating less meat – that anyone can do to make a bit of a difference.
Over the next few weeks I will be posting a few food + climate diaries, as I work out the kinks in recipes for my book “90 Percent Vegan: For Your Waistline, Your Wallet, and the World!” I hope you like them!
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
-Vincent Van Gogh
It’s true: research led by Oxford Martin School finds widespread adoption of vegetarian diets would cut food-related emissions by 63% and make people healthier too.
The research found that…
shifting to a mostly vegetarian diet, or even simply cutting down meat consumption to within accepted health guidelines, would make a large dent in greenhouse gases.
Adhering to health guidelines on meat consumption could cut global food-related emissions by nearly a third by 2050… while widespread adoption of a vegetarian diet would bring down emissions by 63%.
Here’s what M Go Blue’s Center for Sustainable Systems has to say:
- On average, U.S. household food consumption emits 8.1 metric tons of CO2e each year. The production of food accounts for 83% of emissions, while its transportation accounts for 11%.
- The emissions associated with food production consist mainly of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (NO2), which result primarily from agricultural practices.
- Meat products have larger carbon footprints per calorie than grain or vegetable products because of the inefficient transformation of plant energy to animal energy.
- Ruminant animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats produced 167 million metric tons (mmt) in CO2e of methane in the U.S. in 2015 through digestion.
- Eating all locally grown food for one year could save the GHG equivalent of driving 1,000 miles, while eating a vegetarian meal one day a week could save the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles.
At Popular Science, we learn that
beef cattle are the most carbon-intensive food to produce. That’s because cows burp and fart methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Pound for pound, legumes deliver more calories and more protein than beef with a far, far smaller carbon footprint.
And here’s an eye-popping stat: a cheese burger has about the same emissions as a half-gallon of gasoline!
So today’s post isn’t a screed about exhorting the media to talk more about climate change. Instead, let’s talk about food!
Everyone here on Dailykos knows that Beef is Bad for the Climate. We get it: if you’re worried about the climate, you can make a small personal difference by swapping out emissions-intensive foods for foods with a smaller carbon footprint.
But everyone doesn’t know the best way to to do that, or what to buy, or how you’d prepare it if you did buy it. So since there’s lots of talk these days about swapping beef for beans, let’s talk about one of the smallest, most unassuming and mundane of them: the humble white bean!
White beans – little plump beauties with a toothsome bite and velvety interior – are an amazing staple. A nutritional powerhouse, white beans form the utterly delicious base for a simple, hearty, filling, and crazy-good-for-you salad that lasts in the fridge, survives the commute to work, and satisfies your need for creamy, crunchy, tangy and refreshing. White bean salad is this cubicle-dweller’s go-to lunch of choice.
White beans are packed with nutrition. Their Wikipedia page boasts:
“The navy bean, haricot, pearl haricot bean, boston bean, white pea bean, or pea bean, is a variety of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) native to the Americas, where it was domesticated.
It is a small, dry white bean which is smaller than many other types of white beans, and has an oval, slightly flattened shape. It features in such dishes as baked beans, and even pies, as well as in various soups such as Senate bean soup.
Unlike most canned vegetables, which lose much of their nutritive value in the canning process, navy beans maintain their nutritive value when canned.”
And they are delicious. Small, creamy-centered, and plump, they’re an under recognized and underutilized dietary basic.
Like pasta, rice, or potatoes, they marry well with a huge variety of flavors and can be the basis of hot or cold dishes to satisfy a craving for any number of cuisines – like Mexican, Thai, German, French, Greek, Moroccan, Italian, or French!
Unlike pasta, white rice, or potatoes, they are a nutritional powerhouse. Not to ‘dis pasta, rice, or potatoes (which all have much to recommend them – particularly brown, red, or black rice and whole grain pasta) but unassuming little white beans are packed to the brim with nutrients you might not even suspect!
Tucked inside a cup of white beans are almost 20 grams of protein and over 12 grams of fiber. That’s simply amazing! Their mild flavor and unctuous texture doesn’t “feel like” a super food – these days, we mostly expect dramatic foods, like pomegranates and radicchio, to be “super” – but a 300 calorie serving of white beans nourishes you with 43% of your daily value of folate, 44% of your daily requirement of iron, 34% of the potassium you need in a day, and a mind-blowing 67% of the manganese you should be getting every 24 hours. They’re also rich in thiamin, copper, zinc, magnesium, and calcium!
Theme and Variations: White Bean Salad
Here’s my go-to basic salad.
- 2 cups white beans (canned, drained, low sodium beans, or beans you’ve cooked from dry)
- 1 cup diced celery
- 1 cup diced red bell pepper
- 1/2 cup diced red or sweet onion
- Generous handful minced parsley
- Generous handful of salad (Manzanilla) olives, roughly chopped
- Goodly glug of good olive oil
- Hearty splash of balsamic vinegar
- Sprinkle of sea or Maldon salt
Toss everything together and let it sit overnight in the fridge. Pack into single-serving Mason jars and take to work.
Easy variations:
- Switch out the olives and replace with capers. Rinse them if they’ve been packed in salt, and drain if jarred. No need to chop. Each little caper bud provides a pleasantly tangy “pop!” of aromatic flavor as you eat!
- Add a can of tuna, flaked in with a fork. Use your favorite, and check here for whether your tuna is sustainably caught. A 3 ounce can of water-packed albacore tuna adds 90 calories and a whopping 20 grams of protein to the already protein-packed salad.
- Change up the herbs: try adding basil and cherry tomatoes; mince in some rosemary or thyme; or replace the olives with chopped cucumber, then chop in some dill.
- Toss in a diced avocado.
- Use roasted red peppers in place of fresh.
- Include a handful of coarsely diced, oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes for a really deep flavor punch.
What else can you do with white beans? Quite a lot! (None of the following recipes are mine, but they’re tasty!)
White bean pot pies
White bean and greens soup
Baked white beans
White bean dip with raw veggies
White bean quesadillas
Leek and white bean gratin
In closing, I’m going to add a quick poll. And I’d love it you’d chime in in the comments about whether or not you’d consider eating a more plant-based diet. Thanks!