At Sanctuary Farms on Detroit’s East Side, Jøn Kent and a team of volunteers use cardboard and paper bags to starve invasive weedy plants instead of using herbicides; they plant marigolds and lavender amid squash, melons, and collards instead of using pesticides; and they turn food scraps into lush, clean compost.

Kent and his business partner, Jean Parker, wanted to grow fresh produce for their working-class community, which Kent describes as a “food desert.” They also wanted to make sure their farming practices didn’t contribute to the area’s water pollution crisis.

“In Michigan, we have been left with polluted waters in Black neighborhoods from Benton Harbor to Flint,” he said. So Kent and Parker, who launched Sanctuary Farms in 2020, turned to regenerative agriculture practices, like alternating flowers with crops to attract pollinators and repel pests, to have a positive impact on the environment.

“The goal here is to really create a food-sovereign, energy efficient, zero-waste place, so our community knows it’s possible to live off the land,” said Kent.

Young Farmers Lead the Way in Regenerative Farming

Many young farmers share Kent’s commitment to sustainability, according to a new report from the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC). In a survey of over 10,000 farmers across the country, 86% of respondents under 40 said they used regenerative farming practices, which the survey defined as “an approach to farming and ranching that builds healthy soils and ecosystems, supports climate-resilient farms and communities, and addresses inequity in agriculture.”

Of course, as the survey notes, regenerative farming practices aren’t new. Indigenous communities — many of whom were pushed off the land they stewarded for millennia — innovated and practiced these farming techniques for thousands of years.

“Young farmers today find motivation to farm in environmental conservation; anti-racism; and creating healthy, food-secure, and climate-resilient communities,” said Vanessa García Polanco, NYFC’s policy campaign director.

Overhauling the United States’ agriculture system will be crucial to meeting its climate goals. Farms cover about 40% of all US land, according to the most recent Census of Agriculture, and agriculture accounts for about 11% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Some regenerative farming practices, such as no-till farming, cover cropping, and rotational grazing, can help the US reduce those emissions.

But young farmers — particularly young farmers of color — need more support.

Supporting Young BIPOC Farmers

Fifty-nine percent of respondents said finding affordable land to buy was “very or extremely challenging.” Among those who identified as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), that figure was 65%. Respondents also reported difficulty accessing capital, affording health care, and paying off student loans. In all cases, BIPOC respondents reported greater difficulties than their white counterparts.

These challenges may explain why more young people aren’t taking up the profession. The average age of a US farmer is over 57 and is steadily increasing, according to the most recent Census of Agriculture. According to that report, less than 8% of farmers are under age 35.

Kent, 29, spent his early childhood in Detroit. “My community is often hit with the reality that the government doesn’t always come through for us,” said Kent, who is Black. Kent, who only recently paid off his student loans, said accessing capital to finance Sanctuary Farms was a challenge, but added, “In spite of our lack of finances, we have faith. We just gotta keep puttin’ in that work.”

Adapting to Climate Change

Climate change poses another challenge. More than 73% of respondents said they experienced at least one “climate impact” in the form of extreme weather, hotter temperatures, or excess precipitation on their farm in the past year. That figure is up from 66% in 2017, the last time NYFC released a survey.

For some, climate change has wrought devastation.

Carolina Mueller, a farmer from Austin, Texas, and coalition manager with NYFC, said she suffered over $30,000 in losses when a winter storm in February 2021 froze much of the state.

“Winter Storm Uri last year was incredibly traumatic and damaging,” Mueller said. “Temperatures plummeted quickly, and we lost a lot of our livestock and produce.” All three members of the Texas NYFC chapter decided to stop farming after Uri.

For those young farmers across the country who continue to farm, there is an increased awareness of the need to adapt to the changing climate, said Debi Kelly, a field specialist and horticulturist with the University of Missouri’s extension program.

“Some of those old ways of agriculture can’t continue anymore,” said Kelly. “With all these weather events and with population growth, we have to learn how to do things a little bit differently.”

Taking Risks to Meet Climate Goals

Kelly said younger farmers she works with tend to be more willing to take risks and change their practices than older farmers. She said she also noticed younger farmers tend to be more concerned with how their operations affect their surrounding communities. According to the NYFC survey, 83% of young farmers reported that “one of their farm’s primary purposes for existing is engaging in conservation or regeneration.”

The NYFC report comes out as lawmakers are debating the 2023 Farm Bill, a massive omnibus bill that goes before Congress roughly every five years and includes farm subsidies, climate resilience initiatives, and food assistance programs.

If the US is to meet its climate goal by 2030, which requires a 50–52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, Polanco said she believes it will need a transformative farm bill, one that addresses the climate crisis and the rising costs of land.

A New Inclusive Farm Bill

“Land is climate infrastructure for our young farmers,” Polanco said. But land costs are soaring. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), farmland values increased by $420 per acre, or more than 12%, in 2021. The report, which notes that “land ownership is rooted in the dispossession of Indigenous land,” calls on the USDA to support Indigenous communities in securing greater land sovereignty and for the agency to seat the Tribal Advisory Committee, a body created in 2018 to facilitate coordination between Native groups and the federal government.

Polanco said she’d like to see a farm bill that invests in community-led projects, prioritizing projects led by and benefiting socially disadvantaged and economically distressed farmers and ranchers. She said a successful bill would also invest in climate-smart farming adaptations.

These adaptations would look like an expansion of programs like the USDA’s recently launched Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, which supports the production and marketing of climate-smart commodities, increases funding for first-time farmers and ranchers, and improves access to crop insurance programs. The Inflation Reduction Act, which set aside $20 billion for USDA conservation programs, presents an important opportunity for young farmers as well.

Getting young, climate-conscious farmers on the land “is the best way we can fight climate change,” Polanco said. “But we desperately need climate investments that are part of a safety net for farmers, so they can continue stewarding the land when a disaster strikes.”

—–

This article appeared in Nexus Media News on October 17, 2022, with editing help from YES! Magazine and was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change.

Tell us in the comments:

• How do you think farms can become more climate resilient?
• How can government and community organizations better support young farmers of color?
• In what ways can you contribute to or support sustainable agriculture in your local community?

Featured Image: Jøn Kent at Sanctuary Farms in Detroit; Photo By Britny Cordera

Read Next:

• An Overlooked Public Health Crisis Among Black Farmers
• What You Eat Can Impact Climate Change! See 9 Foods That Harm the Planet and 11 Foods That Can Help Save It

The post From Food Deserts to Fertile Grounds: The Rise of Regenerative Farming in Urban America appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

According to economists (who, it seems to me, are a lot better at explaining the past than predicting the future), this massive food inflation is actually caused by a perfect storm of rising demand and lower supply — both intensified by several calamities (like droughts, floods, wars, and knock-on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic) — as well as rising costs for fuel and fertilizer.

For perspective, food prices have typically been rising by about 2% a year for a long time. But from 2021 to 2022, they went up by an average of 11%. And while things seem to have calmed down a bit since then, it’s still easy to get sticker shock any time you visit a cash register.

Even if you’re not paying more outright, you might be paying more in subtle ways. The food industry has recently implemented a tactic known as “shrinkflation,” whereby they offer the same product for the same price — in a smaller quantity, thus avoiding the appearance of higher prices. (“Hey, this is one expensive cornflake!”)

So why exactly have food prices gone up so much? Why do some foods always seem to cost more (or less) than others? And what can you, as a consumer, do about it?

What Influences Food Prices

Did I mention that I’m not an economist? That might be good news here because I’m going to try to simplify the issue of food pricing. There are a few major factors that always influence food pricing. These include how much it costs to produce the food (including the cost of labor for everyone involved in growing and processing it), the cost of transportation and distribution, good old supply and demand, and global trade policies.

Why have food prices gone up so much in the last few years? Three factors stand out, in particular: the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the intensifying climate crisis.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Starting in 2020, the pandemic disrupted nearly every link in the food supply chain. The food processing sector was hit particularly hard, with COVID-19 outbreaks racing through the workforce, due to many people working in close, inadequately ventilated quarters. And the increase in worker turnover, in addition to new COVID protocols, further increased food production costs.

The same labor shortages affected the shipping industry, causing delays and increasing competition for limited shipping space. This led to rising transportation costs. It also increased the price of labor: In order to attract workers, companies had to increase wages, a cost they largely passed directly on to consumers.

As many people shifted their food spending from restaurants to grocery stores, suppliers could not keep up with the change in demand, resulting in massive food waste that effectively decreased supply.

And while 2020 is in the rearview mirror, there’s a funny thing about economics. When prices go up, they rarely come down again. So in some ways, we’re still feeling the effects of the price increases that started in 2020. And now, some additional factors have intensified the situation.

The War in Ukraine

Before the war, Russia and Ukraine were among the largest wheat producers in the world, together accounting for 30% of all exports — and a staggering 12% of all agricultural calories traded on earth. Both production and export have dropped dramatically due to the war.

Russia set up blockades of Ukrainian food exports in the Black Sea, stranding food in ports and creating global shortages. Western countries responded with sanctions against Russian grain exports, intensifying those shortages.

In addition to embargoes on food, the West has also implemented partial bans on Russian exports. These have included oil and gas, which have increased the energy costs associated with food production around the world.

Another blockaded product is fertilizer. As Russia is a major exporter of synthetic fertilizers, accounting for almost 30% of all exports globally, fertilizer prices have also been soaring — impacting farmers and, therefore, food prices.

Increasing Climate Chaos and Disasters

As temperatures continue to rise, crops are sustaining damage from excess heat. And as precipitation patterns change, droughts and flooding (sometimes alternating in the same place) also prevent crops from thriving. This can harm crops by eroding soil, depleting soil nutrients, and increasing runoff.

No farmer wants to try to coax crops out of the ground in conditions of extreme and prolonged drought. As more and more of the arable land on Earth suffers under multiyear drought, farmers are increasingly relying on groundwater, which they’re depleting at an alarming rate.

Additionally, rising temperatures increase pest populations and sometimes allow new pests to take up residence in regions that had previously been inhospitable for them. Temperature shifts can also cause a mismatch in pollination cycles, so the “good” bugs can’t do their jobs — leading to low pollination rates or delayed pollination.

One more disastrous effect of a warming planet is the danger to agricultural workers. More and more of them are suffering from the effects of extreme heat as they toil in parched fields. The National Institutes of Health tells us that farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure than workers in other industries. As conditions become less hospitable, it can be harder for farm owners to find the skilled laborers they need to get their fields planted and harvested. And dynamics in US immigration policy have contributed to a shortage of these workers.

As the planet continues to overheat, and as groundwater gets depleted and droughts and floods intensify, food prices are expected to continue to increase in the coming decades.

Why Do Some Foods Always Cost More (or Less)?

Governmental policies cause some foods to be more expensive than they would be otherwise — while others are made artificially cheaper. To see this in action, let’s look at a category of foods whose price is inflated (organic foods) and another whose price is deflated (grains and the products derived from grains).

Organic and Healthy Food Costs

Organic foods are more expensive than their “conventional” counterparts for several reasons. For one, organic food typically costs more to produce because the process is more labor-intensive than large-scale industrial agricultural methods.

Supply and demand play a role here as well. There’s a much smaller supply of organic food than nonorganic, even though demand for organic foods has more than doubled in the past 10 years. While this demand has caught the attention of some farmers who have decided to convert part or all of their operations to organic methods, this process takes time. In the meanwhile, prices continue to rise as demand grows, but supply lags.

There’s also a policy choice that makes organic food more expensive, which is that organic certification is costly, and getting that certification can be time-consuming. Organic farmers must keep extensive records and pay for organic certification, while farms that use synthetic pesticides don’t have to do either.

Another reason for organic’s higher prices has to do with the concept of “externalities” — that is, costs that arguably should be included in the market price but aren’t.

For example, what are the true costs of topsoil erosion, pesticide exposure for farmworkers and consumers, water and air pollution, or of the routine use of antibiotics in modern factory farms? If these were factored in, we might find that organic food would cost less, not more, than its conventional counterparts.

The fact is that organically grown foods tend to be better for environmental protection and carbon sequestration, deliver higher standards for animal welfare, and contribute to a safer and healthier food supply.

But consumers still have to pay more, and sometimes a lot more, to purchase foods that are grown organically.

Despite this, there are still some compelling advantages to go organic if you can afford to do so. And if you can’t, then you might want to soak your produce in a dab of baking soda to help rid it of pesticide exposure (for our article on what works best, click here).

Government Subsidies

The US government provides agricultural subsidies — monetary payments and other types of support — to farmers or agribusinesses. This ensures that farmers receive a minimum price for their crops while also incentivizing overproduction and inflated production costs. That way, subsidized foods and products made from them appear cheaper than nonsubsidized foods.

Generally, only the largest producers can take advantage of farm subsidies. According to a report from the Environmental Working Group, between 1995 and 2021, the top 10% of all US farm subsidy recipients received almost 80% of all subsidies, while the bottom 80% got less than 10%.

The five major “program” commodities are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.

Most soybeans and corn are produced by massive monocrop farms rather than small family enterprises. A lot of this subsidized corn and soy is fed to livestock, which artificially lowers the price of animal-derived foods produced on factory farms. All told, the US federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Without these subsidies, a pound of hamburger meat could cost $30, rather than the $5 price seen today. But the true cost plays out in its impact on our health, animals, and the environment — and in the form of taxes and expansion of the national debt.

Is it better in Europe? Well, in many ways, it’s not. According to a 2019 report from Greenpeace, nearly one-fifth of the EU’s entire budget goes to subsidizing the livestock industry.

In effect, these subsidies consistently decrease the price of things like factory-farmed meat, high-fructose corn syrup, white bread, and many of the additives in our food supply — creating a marketplace distortion that makes fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and other healthy staples more expensive in comparison.

To my eyes, it’s a bit like we’re all being fined for wearing our seatbelts. If we want to do the safer and more responsible thing, we have to pay extra.

What You Can Do About Rising Food Prices

If you’re feeling the pinch of rising food prices yourself, there are several strategies that can help you stay within your budget without sacrificing your family’s health.

Make a budget and shop from a list to avoid making impulse purchases while at the store. Prioritize nutrient-dense foods over calorie-dense ones. The latter may seem cheaper by the pound or the calorie, but in terms of what foods can do for you (or to you), good nutrition is more economical than impaired functioning or chronic disease. And buy and cook in bulk to save money and time.

Try to shop locally if you can to avoid incentivizing costly supply chains. If you’re in the US and use SNAP benefits, keep in mind that you can use them to shop for fresh produce at many farmers markets.

Also, buy organic when you can. If you are in a position financially where you can afford to spend more, you can “vote with your dollars” (or euros or pounds or rupees) to make the system fairer and more accessible to everyone. But if you can’t afford the organic price premium, then aim for non-GMO produce items and wash them thoroughly to reduce your pesticide exposure as much as possible.

If you have to choose which fruits and veggies to buy organic, check out the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean 15. Choose organic members of the Dirty Dozen club, and don’t sweat nonorganic Clean 15 items.

Frozen fruits and vegetables can sometimes be more affordable than fresh ones, and they contain abundant nutrition.

And reducing your consumption of animal products can not only help feed the world’s population because we aren’t cycling our crops through animals (a process that wastes at least 9 out of every 10 calories, depending on the crop and the animal eating it), but it can also lead to reductions in costly greenhouse gas emissions, too. Plus, beans tend to be a lot less costly than beef (to animals, the environment, and your wallet, too).

Food Pricing Is Complex, But Healthy Eating Shouldn’t Be

The recent surge in food prices has highlighted the intricate web of factors influencing the cost of our food. From labor shortages and technology costs to climate change and war, the forces at play are vast and interconnected.

But there are ways to navigate these challenging times. By adopting conscious strategies, we can mitigate the impact of rising food prices on our wallets and well-being. Through awareness and mindful decision-making, we can not only do right for our health, but we can also contribute to a more healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system.

Tell us in the comments:

• What foods that you buy frequently have gone up the most in price recently?
• Have you made any changes or substitutions because of food price inflation?
• Which cost-saving strategies could you try?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Ilija Erceg

Read Next:

• A Guide to Going Plant-Based: What to Eat, Benefits, and How to Succeed
• 7 Healthy Recipes for Eating Plant-Based on a Budget

The post The Price of Food: What’s Making Food So Expensive & What You Can Do About It appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Think of a tree losing its leaves, which end up on the ground. Little critters (that’s a fancy scientific term, which I like to imagine translates as Tinius Buggiums in binomial nomenclature) use them to stay warm, munch them down, and then poop out rich soil. When the critters die, they get digested by other organisms, and their nutrients get absorbed into the tree roots. Or if they get eaten by birds, they get converted into bird poop, which also feeds the soil under the sycamore the bird was perching on.

When humans rake up and bag the leaves, or for that matter, mow a lawn and remove the grass clippings, they’ve broken the cycle. So to keep the trees and lawns alive, they may in turn replace the missing nutrients with synthetic fertilizer. And they need to find a place to store all the plastic bags full of yard waste.

Similarly, when we don’t return food scraps to gardens and farms, we create two problems that don’t exist in nature: where to put ever-growing heaps of trash, and how to grow food in increasingly depleted soil.

That’s where composting comes in — that is, putting the scraps in a place where nature can do its thing.

But what if you have little to no outdoor space, or live in an apartment? What can you do with your kitchen scraps then?

The good news is that there are many ways you can keep food scraps out of your waste stream even if all you have is a little space in a basement, garage, spare room, or even just on your kitchen counter.

So how can you start composting in your own kitchen? What are your options? What tools do you need? And how can you ensure you don’t end up with a kitchen that smells like the bottom of a restaurant dumpster?

Why Save Your Food Scraps?

As planet-friendly as a diet may be, if it’s generating a lot of food waste, it can still be a real burden on the planet.

When food scraps rot, they release methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide. Many of our landfills turn into huge steaming piles of methane-emitting organic waste, which seriously compromises any plans of reversing our ever-intensifying global climate chaos.

Some of our garbage is burned, and here, too, organic waste is a problem. When moist food scraps end up in incinerators, they require a lot of extra energy to keep the burner temperatures high enough to fully incinerate all the trash. The higher temperatures also contribute to the release of more toxins into the air. This can cause serious health problems for nearby communities (which are disproportionately low-income and communities of color).

We definitely don’t want that. So what do we do with all those food scraps? Wait for NASA to figure out how to tow them to Venus?

Here’s the thing: Kitchen scraps are actually a hugely valuable resource, one that’s mostly wasted in our broken food system. In fact, food waste wasn’t even accepted in municipal waste programs until the mid-20th century. Instead, they were often fed to backyard or farm animals, or were kept in a separate underground receptacle called a subterranean receiver.

Other creative ways to reuse food scraps and keep them out of the garbage stream include making art with them, creating skin care products, or even using them in new recipes. Depending on the scrap, you might even be able to coax it to grow into more food.

(For some more ideas, you can read our article on How to Use Food Scraps to Reduce Kitchen Waste.)

But if you aren’t ready to turn your cucumber peels into a facial mask or decorate a dress with pumpkin seeds, you may want to try composting instead. That is, letting nature take its course with your food scraps, turning rotting peels, skins, seeds, pits, and ends back into rich soil that’s ready to grow the next generation of crops.

Saving Food Scraps in the Kitchen for Compost

Food scraps are organic materials, which means they can break down and benefit the soil in the form of compost.

Some US cities are actually mandating composting, requiring that you place your food waste in a separate container from regular trash or recycling. If you live in one of those municipalities, you probably have a green bin that’s earmarked for food waste. If you’re not sure if your county or city offers municipal composting, you can check one of the maps on the environmental nonprofit GreenBlue’s website.

But even if you don’t live in a city with a composting program, there are other ways to utilize your food scraps for compost.

There are apps like ShareWaste or MakeSoil that are basically compost brokers, connecting neighbors who produce compost with neighbors who want it. It’s kind of like Tinder, but you don’t have to resort to ring lights, beauty filters, or duck face.

There are also other community composting options via local farms, community gardens, recycling centers, or private composting companies.

If you have a garden or other outdoor space, you might have room to nurture a traditional compost pile or tumbler. And if so, you might benefit from checking our guide to home composting.

And for any of these methods, you can easily collect food scraps in a small compost collection bin in the kitchen before either throwing them in a larger bin, donating them to a community program, or emptying them into an outdoor compost pile.

What Can You Compost?

While all organic materials are theoretically compostable, some will take so long to break down that for all practical purposes, they’re not appropriate for kitchen composting. Some municipal compost programs also don’t accept certain types of food scraps, such as animal products or even citrus rinds. And some accept disposable utensils and containers made of bioplastics, while others don’t. Check with your local program administrator for a full list of approved items.

For a general list of what you can compost, here’s a handy (and possibly even dandy) infographic.

Tips for Controlling Food Scrap or Compost Odors

The smellephant in the room when it comes to composting is the fact that composting is kind of an elegant name for rotting. And rotting smells. As singer-songwriter Tom Chapin puts it in his composting anthem “Good Garbage”:

“Good garbage breaks down as it goes
That’s why it smells bad to your nose
Bad garbage grows and grows and grows
Garbage is s’posed to decompose.”

So here are some suggestions for a largely odor-free compost collection experience.

Use a bin with a lid. This will not only trap odors but also help prevent pests like fruit flies. (As Groucho Marx sagely observed, “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” I had to think about that for a bit before it made sense.)

Empty your compost container regularly. This is definitely not a “set it and forget it” hobby. You’ll figure out the right schedule for you, which will depend on the amount of kitchen scraps you generate, the type of bin you use, the ambient temperature and humidity, and whether you sing to it or not (OK, I made that last one up because I wanted a longer list). Some folks empty their bins weekly; others find that daily is more appropriate.

Keep your home reasonably cool, especially in the summertime. Nothing says “strong pong” like produce rotting in a sauna-like environment.

If you can’t get rid of your scraps in a timely fashion (say, you’re going away for a few days and don’t want to return to a “Silence of the Yams” horror-scape), you can freeze them in an airtight plastic or glass container. This will halt the process of decomposition so you won’t end up with nasty aromas.

Finally, clean your container after each emptying. Check whether it’s dishwasher safe; some should be washed only by hand. Even if you’re using a compostable plastic bag, you may find that some slime has made it into the interior of your container, so a good scrubbing with a brush and soapy water can go a long way to keeping your kitchen smelling like the room in the house where food goes before it’s eaten, as opposed to after.

Compost Collection Bins

There are a range of compost bins on the market, varying in look, price, convenience, size, and capacity. You can go high-end (well, not that high-end; as of this writing, there are no Gucci or Prada composting bins) or simple, small or large, minimalist or packed with features. You can also DIY compost bins out of just about any container you have lying around.

In the end, though, their ultimate purpose is to collect and contain your food scraps so they don’t go to waste and end up in the landfill (or sit around and attract flies and perfume the air with eau de sewage).

DIY Compost Bins

Henry David Thoreau warned, “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Similarly, you don’t need to invest in a fancy compost bin to collect your food scraps. You can repurpose almost any type of container, although you’ll definitely want a lid to keep the odors in and not floating around your kitchen.

Some examples of DIY compost containers include plastic or glass storage bins, buckets, bowls, flowerpots, and empty food containers like coffee cans.

Countertop Compost Bins

If the idea of a grungy orange five-gallon bucket from Home Depot sitting between your toaster and blender doesn’t fill you with joy, you can also purchase a simple compost container made specifically for that purpose. They come in various materials, including plastic, stainless steel, bamboo, and ceramic.

Some bins can be used with compostable bags, which may make it easier to clean the inside of the container. If you’re part of a municipal composting program, check with the administrator to find out if they actually accept compostable bags, as not all do.

Some commercially available containers also come with filters made of activated charcoal or carbon to capture odors before they can escape and assault your nose (or entice it, if you happen to have the nose of a fruit fly).

Countertop Composting

While the containers we’ve looked at so far are just receptacles for holding kitchen scraps, there are also ways to create compost right on your countertop. This type of composting is especially well suited for single people or couples without children, who generally generate less waste than larger families.

Countertop composting can also be very convenient since you don’t need to venture outside to deal with the scraps; you can gather up the peels and seeds right next to where you process the food. And it’s a great option to make a dent in food waste if you live in an apartment, don’t have outdoor space, or don’t have access to a curbside composting program.

There are three main ways to perform kitchen composting: One is powered by worms, another by fermentation, and the third by electricity.

Worm Composting

Worm composting bins take advantage of the fact that many worm varieties can eat up to half their body weight each day. And they’re diligent about rapidly converting that food into worm poop, which is a lot less gross than it sounds and is actually really nutrient-rich soil.

The fancy name for worm composting is vermicomposting (if you’re raising the worms, you’re engaged in vermiculture). It’s a pretty straightforward process: Feed worms food scraps, keep them sufficiently aerated and hydrated, maintain a liveable temperature, harvest the castings on a regular basis, and keep them contained so they don’t start casing your kitchen looking for food.

You’ll need a waterproof container with air holes (which you can either make yourself or put together from a purchased kit), moist bedding material, and worms (which you can order online, much to the delight of your mail carrier).

If seeing the worms in your kitchen makes you squeamish, it might be better to keep it out of sight under the sink or in another room, at least on those nights when you’re serving linguine or (etymology alert) vermicelli.

(If you’re a dedicated vegan, you may or may not determine that vermicomposting aligns with your ethical sensibilities. Personally, I think that building a world with less waste — and more compost! — contributes to the cause of compassion. But of course, as in all things, do what makes sense to you.)

Bokashi Composting

“Bokashi” means “fermented organic matter” in Japanese. And the Bokashi method of composting speeds up the process by introducing microorganisms into the mix, the same wee beasties that occur naturally in garden soil. Bokashi is usually done in a bucket with a tight-fitting lid and a spigot at the bottom (like one of those big glass beverage dispensers people use at cookouts, except instead of iced tea, you get Bokashi tea).

All you do is throw in your kitchen scraps, cover with a layer of bran inoculated with the microorganisms, and leave it alone. As the food waste pickles, it produces a dark, nutrient-rich liquid that you can access through the spigot, which, mixed with lots of water, your house plants will simply adore. Also, drawing off the liquid keeps the fermenting compost from smelling like an open sewer once you open it.

After somewhere between 10 and 21 days, you can open the bucket and behold what can charitably be called “pre-compost.” It’s not crumbly soil, but the food waste is fermented enough that it can either get mixed directly into a garden bed or finished in a compost pile or compost tumbler. Most Bokashi systems use two buckets in rotation, so you can feed scraps to one bucket while the other one is “locked” in fermentation.

You can buy Bokashi buckets and inoculated bran online or from a local garden store. YouTube searches will also show you how to make your own buckets and DIY vegan inoculated bran. Or to check out a starter kit that comes complete with bucket, spigot, and inoculant, click here.

Electric Composters

Electric composters bring the ancient art of rotting food into the modern age. They don’t just collect food scraps, but actually break them down into usable soil in a matter of hours. They do this by heating, grinding, and drying the scraps. Some include microbial pods that render the compost into garden-ready fertilizer. And they include filters, so you shouldn’t have a problem with odors.

Electric composters can come with some downsides. To accommodate their high-tech features, they’re typically bulkier than their manual cousins, and take up more counter space. They can also be expensive, both their original purchase price and their total cost of ownership, including supplies and electricity. However, some can be quite energy efficient, and the value they provide in terms of home garden fertilizer can make them more than worth the expense.

Don’t Let Your Food Scraps Go to Waste

Whether you just use compost collection bins to save your food scraps for curbside pickup or try your hand at one of the countertop composting methods, kitchen composting is a great way to reduce food waste and contribute to a healthier planet.

Best of all, you don’t need a backyard or a lot of space to put your food scraps to use. From kitchen counters to basements, there are creative ways to transform your food scraps into rich, nourishing soil.

By embracing composting, you not only divert waste from landfills but also help enrich soil, foster plant growth, and mitigate the challenges of depleted farmlands. Remember, every step you take to reduce waste and to turn trash into treasure is a step towards a more healthy, ethical, and sustainable future.

Tell us in the comments:

• What do you do with your kitchen scraps right now?

• Do you live in a place with a municipal kitchen scrap recycling program? How easy or hard is it to participate?

• If you don’t yet collect kitchen scraps for compost, what method described in this article seems most appealing to get started with?

Featured Image: iStock.com/JohnnyGreig

Read Next:

• How to Use Food Scraps to Reduce Kitchen Waste
• Decades of Public Messages About Recycling in the US Have Crowded Out More Sustainable Ways to Manage Waste

The post Kitchen Compost: Turning Trash into Treasure appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

You’ve just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you’re facing a trash bin, a recycling bin, and a compost bin. What’s the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup?

Many of us would opt for the recycling bin — but that’s often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids, most paper coffee cups are made with a thin plastic lining, which makes separating these materials and recycling them difficult.

In fact, the most sustainable option isn’t available at the trash bin. It happens earlier, before you’re handed a disposable cup in the first place.

In our research on waste behavior, sustainability, engineering design, and decision-making, we examine what US residents understand about the efficacy of different waste management strategies and which of those strategies they prefer. In two nationwide surveys in the US that we conducted in October 2019 and March 2022, we found that people overlook waste reduction and reuse in favor of recycling. We call this tendency recycling bias and reduction neglect.

Our results show that a decades-long effort to educate the US public about recycling has succeeded in some ways but failed in others. These efforts have made recycling an option that consumers see as important — but to the detriment of more sustainable options. And it has not made people more effective recyclers.

Caption: Recycling rules vary widely across the US, leaving consumers to figure out what to do.

A Global Waste Crisis

Experts and advocates widely agree that humans are generating waste worldwide at levels that are unmanageable and unsustainable. Microplastics are polluting the earth’s most remote regions and amassing in the bodies of humans and animals.

Producing and disposing of goods is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and a public health threat, especially for vulnerable communities that receive large quantities of waste. New research suggests that even when plastic does get recycled, it produces staggering amounts of microplastic pollution.

Given the scope and urgency of this problem, in June 2023, the United Nations convened talks with government representatives from around the globe to begin drafting a legally binding pact aimed at stemming harmful plastic waste. Meanwhile, many US cities and states are banning single-use plastic products or restricting their use.

Caption: On March 30, 2023, the UN declared the first International Day of Zero Waste to raise awareness of the importance of zero waste and responsible consumption and production.

Upstream and Downstream Solutions

Experts have long recommended tackling the waste problem by prioritizing source reduction strategies that prevent the creation of waste in the first place, rather than seeking to manage and mitigate its impact later. The US Environmental Protection Agency and other prominent environmental organizations like the UN Environment Programme use a framework called the waste management hierarchy that ranks strategies from most to least environmentally preferred.

The familiar waste management hierarchy urges people to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” in that order. Creating items that can be recycled is better from a sustainability perspective than burning them in an incinerator or burying them in a landfill, but it still consumes energy and resources. In contrast, reducing waste generation conserves natural resources and avoids other negative environmental impacts throughout a product’s life.

R’s Out of Place

In our surveys, participants completed a series of questions and tasks that elicited their views of different waste strategies. In response to open-ended questions about the most effective way to reduce landfill waste or solve environmental issues associated with waste, participants overwhelmingly cited recycling and other downstream strategies.

We also asked people to rank the four strategies of the Environmental Protection Agency’s waste management hierarchy from most to least environmentally preferred. In that order, they include source reduction and reuse; recycling and composting; energy recovery, such as burning trash to generate energy; and treatment and disposal, typically in a landfill. More than three out of four participants (78%) ordered the strategies incorrectly.

When they were asked to rank the reduce/reuse/recycle options in the same way, participants fared somewhat better, but nearly half (46%) still misordered the popular phrase.

Finally, we asked participants to choose between just two options — waste prevention and recycling. This time, over 80% of participants understood that preventing waste was much better than recycling.

Recycling Badly

While our participants defaulted to recycling as a waste management strategy, they did not execute it very well.

This isn’t surprising, since the current US recycling system puts the onus on consumers to separate recyclable materials and keep contaminants out of the bin. There is a lot of variation in what can be recycled from community to community, and this standard can change frequently as new products are introduced and markets for recycled materials shift.

Our second study asked participants to sort common consumer goods into virtual recycling, compost, and trash bins and then say how confident they were in their choices. Many people placed common recycling contaminants, including plastic bags (58%), disposable coffee cups (46%), and light bulbs (26%), erroneously — and often confidently — in the virtual recycling bins. For a few materials, such as cardboard and aluminum foil, the correct answer can vary depending on the capacities of local waste management systems.

This is known as wishcycling — placing non-recyclable items in the recycling stream in the hope or belief that they will be recycled. Wishcycling creates additional costs and problems for recyclers, who have to sort the materials, and sometimes results in otherwise recyclable materials being landfilled or incinerated instead.

Although our participants were strongly biased toward recycling, they weren’t confident that it would work. Participants in our first survey were asked to estimate what fraction of plastic has been recycled since plastic production began. According to a widely cited estimate, the answer is just 9%. Our respondents thought that 25% of plastic had been recycled — more than expert estimates but still a low amount. And they correctly reasoned that a majority of it has ended up in landfills and the environment.

Empowering Consumers to Cut Waste

Postconsumer waste is the result of a long supply chain with environmental impacts at every stage. However, US policy and corporate discourse focus on consumers as the main source of waste, as implied by the term “post-consumer waste.”

Other approaches put more responsibility on producers by requiring them to take back their products for disposal, cover recycling costs, and design and produce goods that are easy to recycle effectively. These approaches are used in some sectors in the US, including lead-acid car batteries and consumer electronics, but they are largely voluntary or mandated at the state and local levels.

When we asked participants in our second study where change could have the most impact and where they felt they could have the most impact as individuals, they correctly focused on upstream interventions. But they felt they could only affect the system through what they chose to purchase and how they subsequently disposed of it — in other words, acting as consumers, not as citizens.

As waste-related pollution accumulates worldwide, corporations continue to shame and blame consumers rather than reduce the amount of disposable products they create. In our view, recycling is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for overproducing and consuming goods, and it is time that the US stopped treating it as such.

Tell us in the comments:

• How do you reduce your consumption on a regular basis?

• Were you aware of the issues with recycling?

• How else can companies and institutions become more sustainable?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Portra

Read Next:

• Recycling: Guidelines, Challenges, & Resources
• Zero Waste Kitchen Tips for the Modern World

The post Decades of Public Messages About Recycling in the US Have Crowded Out More Sustainable Ways to Manage Waste appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

We know that meat has a substantial impact on the planet and that plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable. But exactly how much impact does the food we eat have on environmental outcomes, and what difference would following a vegan diet make compared to consuming a high-meat, or even low-meat diet?

We studied 55,000 people’s dietary data and linked what they ate or drank to five key measures: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. Our results are now published in Nature Food. We found that vegans have just 30% of the dietary environmental impact of high-meat eaters.

The dietary data came from a major study into cancer and nutrition that has been tracking the same people (about 57,000 in total across the UK) for more than two decades. Those who participated in our study reported what they ate and drank over 12 months, and we then classified them into six different groups: vegan, vegetarian, fish eaters, and low-, medium-, and high-meat eaters based on their self-reported dietary habits.

We then linked their dietary reports to a dataset containing information on the environmental impact of 57,000 foods. Crucially, the dataset factored in how and where a food is produced — carrots grown in a greenhouse in Spain will have a different impact from those grown in a field in the UK, for instance. This builds on past studies, which tend to assume, for example, that all types of bread, or all steak, or all lasagna have the same environmental impact.

By incorporating more detail and nuance, we were able to show with more certainty that different diets have different environmental impacts. We found that even the least sustainable vegan diet was still more environmentally friendly than the most sustainable meat eater’s diet. In other words, accounting for region of origin and methods of food production does not obscure the differences in the environmental impacts between diet groups.

Vegans vs Carnivores

Unsurprisingly, diets containing more animal-based foods had higher environmental impacts. Per unit of food consumed, meat and dairy have anywhere from three to 100 times the environmental impact of plant-based foods.

This can mean huge differences between the two extremes, vegans and high-meat eaters. Vegans in our study had just 25% of the dietary impact of high-meat eaters in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, for instance. That’s because meat uses more land, which means more deforestation and less carbon stored in trees. It uses lots of fertilizer (usually produced from fossil fuels) to feed the plants that feed the animals. And because cows and other animals directly emit gases themselves.

It’s not just emissions. Compared to the high-meat eaters, vegans also had just 25% of the dietary impact for land use, 46% for water use, 27% for water pollution, and 34% for biodiversity.

Even low-meat diets had only about 70% of the impact across most environmental measures of high-meat diets. This is important: You don’t have to go full vegan or even vegetarian to make a big difference.

Global Impact

These findings are crucial as the food system is estimated to be responsible for around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of the world’s freshwater use, and 78% of freshwater pollution. Around three-quarters of the world’s ice-free land has been affected by human use, primarily for agriculture and land use change such as deforestation, which is a major source of biodiversity loss.

In the UK, meat-eating declined over the decade to 2018, but in order to meet environmental targets, the National Food Strategy and the UK’s Climate Change Committee recommend an additional 30%–35% reduction.

The choices we make about what we eat are personal. They are highly ingrained habits that can be difficult to change. But our study, and others, are continuing to solidify evidence that the food system is having a massive, global environmental and health impact which could be reduced by a transition towards more plant-based diets. We hope that our work can encourage policymakers to take action and people to make more sustainable choices while still eating something nutritious, affordable, and tasty.

Tell us in the comments:

• Does sustainability factor into your food choices?

• Are you surprised by these findings?

• Will these results change how you eat or think about your diet?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Aamulya

The post Vegan Diet Has Just 30% of the Environmental Impact of a High-Meat Diet, Major Study Finds appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If so, you might be a plant-based eater. Or (are you sitting down right now?) you might instead adhere to quite the opposite: a carnivore diet.

Carnivore diets — and yes, there are several — have surged in popularity in the last few years. Starting on the far fringe of nutrition and wellness, the carnivore movement has burst more into the mainstream through books by doctors, publicity on podcasts, and testimonials from popular wellness influencers and online personalities.

While low-carb diets are nothing new (Atkins, South Beach, and keto are all examples), carnivore diets take this trend to a whole new level. Instead of just low-carb, many of them are “zero-carb,” promoting the exclusive consumption of animal-derived foods while shunning most (or all) plants.

Carnivore diet advocates claim that eating nothing but animals is the optimal way for humans to eat. They believe that by doing so, you can achieve your ideal weight, grow big muscles, alleviate autoimmune disease, cure brain fog, and improve your digestion. And if the diet seems extremely limiting, don’t worry; advocates believe you can still get every nutrient you need from animal products alone.

So in this article, let’s explore if there is any scientific basis for these carnivore claims. And while we’re at it, we’ll also look at the diet’s environmental impact. Rather than fan the flames of this particular culture war, let’s separate fact from fiction to make well-informed decisions about our nutritional paths.

What Is a Carnivore Diet?

A carnivore diet means getting the vast majority (or all) of your calories from animal products. A typical carnivore menu includes red meat, game meat, fish, poultry, and organ meat. Some versions also include dairy and eggs, or small amounts of low-starch vegetables like avocados and cucumbers, while others do not. The diets are either extremely low-carb or often no-carb, which means, by definition, excluding all or most plant-based foods.

Carnivore diets are similar to certain forms of keto (ketogenic) and Paleo (Paleolithic) diets, which are often meat-heavy and plant-poor, but carnivore dieters go an extra step. Instead of meat being the centerpiece of every meal, it’s basically the only piece. This puts eaters into ketosis, the body’s “emergency state” that allows it to convert stored fat (and, in extreme cases, protein) into ketone bodies that can be used for fuel when the body’s preferred fuel, carbohydrates, isn’t available.

But for die-hard carnivores, avoiding plants isn’t just about achieving ketosis. There’s also an avoidance of plants because of “antinutrients,” a refrain also seen with Dr. Steven Gundry’s warnings against lectins.

Proponents of carnivore diets make the case that animal products are easier to digest than plants. Asking followers to “[T]hink about it from a plants [sic] point of view,” Dr. Paul Saladino claims that since plants can’t run away or fight back, they create their own pesticides to deter over-predation. And so animals like us experience compromised health because those compounds mess with our digestion, preventing us from absorbing some nutrients and causing intestinal and immune distress.

But in reality, many animals do eat plants (and thrive off them). And many of the antinutrients in plants have profound health benefits and are mostly eliminated anyway during cooking.

We’ll see in a bit if the facts support or contradict this dietary approach. First, though, let’s go deeper into the weeds — or the organs, if we’re relying on flesh-based metaphors here — to explore the prominent subtypes of carnivore diet you’re likely to encounter.

Carnivore Diet Subtypes

The Carnivore Diet

The “standard issue” Carnivore Diet was popularized by Shawn Baker, a former orthopedic surgeon and diet influencer. Baker had his medical license revoked in 2017 by the New Mexico Medical Board for ethical violations and “incompetence to practice as a licensee.” (To some of his fans this only proves that Baker is a truth-teller fighting a corrupt system.)

Baker’s version of the diet allows the consumption of only meat, fish, and other animal products like eggs and certain dairy products.

The Ancestral Diet

The Ancestral Diet is similar to the Paleo diet but prioritizes meat over all other foods. In a nod to reality, it includes seasonal fruits and vegetables in small amounts. It also allows some dairy and fermented foods. Ancestral Diet adherents characterize it as more than just a diet; they see it as a comprehensive philosophy of living that includes a return to nature.

Pros of the Ancestral Diet include avoidance of processed foods and inclusion, although limited, of some plant-based foods.

The Lion Diet

The Lion Diet is where carnivore meets elimination diets. Those on a Lion Diet limit themselves to beef, salt, and water. It got a lot of press when Mikhaila Peterson, daughter of best-selling Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, promoted it as a cure for depression, rheumatoid arthritis, muscle weakness, night sweats, asthma, insomnia, PTSD… and a whole lot more. Jordan Peterson adopted the diet as well, and promoted it on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and his own popular YouTube channel.

The Nose-to-Tail Diet

The Nose-to-Tail Diet has been popularized by Dr. Paul Saladino and Brian Johnson, an online influencer known as the “Liver King” due to his propensity to consume raw liver on the regular. The muscle-bound Johnson has nothing but scorn for most modern men, whom he accuses of being submissive, sub-primal, and weak. They have been brainwashed to eat vegetables rather than dominate, kill, and eat other species, he argues, and so lead mediocre and unsatisfying lives.

Theories of human development aside, this diet consists of eating all parts of the animal, including organ meats, connective tissue, and bone marrow (essentially nose-to-tail of an animal), as well as some fermented plant foods.

The Plant-Based Backlash

When you listen to the rhetoric of some of the carnivore movement’s most enthusiastic proponents, you might get the idea that, in addition to any health benefit or scientific claim, there’s also a significant element of backlash to plant-based diets.

Traditionally, meat-eating has been associated with masculinity and machismo (although films like The Game Changers are starting to challenge that association), so the rise of plant-based eating has triggered a “culture war” response that goes far beyond nutrition. There’s a lot of name-calling and invitations to settle differences through MMA cage matches, for example.

I haven’t personally been invited into the octagon by a carnivore enthusiast to duke it out, but I do have a number of friends who adopted a carnivore diet approach and initially experienced some of the promised benefits. Their inflammation lessened, and most lost weight — at first.

None of them stuck with it long-term, because they found it — and I’m quoting them all here — “gross.” But still, their stories left me with questions. How could they possibly benefit, even for a short time, from a diet so diametrically opposed to the plant-based diet that most science shows is the healthiest for humans? Isn’t too much meat bad for everything from heart disease to type 2 diabetes to obesity?

Let’s dive in to explore the health claims of carnivore diets, and what the research really says about eating this way.

Health Claims of Carnivore Diets

Carnivore advocates claim a broad array of health benefits. I don’t have the space here to examine every single claim, so I’ll focus on the most common ones: weight loss, brain health, reduced inflammation and remission of autoimmune disease, and improved digestion.

Spoiler alert: The scientific evidence supporting these claims is — and I’m being extremely charitable here — limited and inconclusive. There are no long-term, large-scale clinical trials that specifically examine the effects of carnivore diets on any of these aspects of health. Instead, there are a lot of anecdotes, a few online surveys, and small studies of limited scope and duration.

Carnivore Diets and Weight Loss

Currently, no studies have been conducted that looked at weight loss with carnivore diets. However, the theory that low-carb diets are supposed to lead to weight loss is known as the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model (CIM) of obesity.

Proponents assert that eating carbs triggers a release of insulin, which, according to this model, leads to hunger and overeating, and ultimately, fat storage and excess weight.

One study did show that low-carb diets high in animal foods can lead to weight loss. But, the diet did include some plant foods. The bigger issue, though, was its severe calorie restriction. The study’s average low-carb dieter took in fewer than 1,500 calories per day — an amount that all but guarantees weight loss in most people, regardless of the foods consumed.

A clinical trial published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine in 2021 tested a low-fat, minimally processed, plant-based diet against a low-carb, minimally processed, animal-based diet.

Participants could eat as much of their assigned diet as they wanted — no limits other than personal preference and satiety. And the results directly contradicted the predictions of the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model. Those eating the low-fat diet consumed almost 700 fewer calories per day than the low-carb eaters. “Despite the large differences in calorie intake,” the researchers reported that “participants (expressed) no differences in hunger, enjoyment of meals, or fullness between the two diets. Participants lost weight on both diets, but only the low-fat diet led to a significant loss of body fat.”

Indeed, other studies have shown that the most weight-loss-friendly foods are, in fact, plants. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition even concluded that each additional year of adopting a vegan diet decreases the risk of obesity by 7%.

Meanwhile, increased fat intake and high-fat diets (looking at you here, carnivore diets) actually have a strong association with increased body weight and risk of overweight and obesity.

Carnivore Diet and Brain Health

Proponents of carnivore diets often describe better cognitive function and improved mental clarity. But, as of this writing, no scientific studies have been conducted to investigate these claims.

The only evidence I could find was a survey of people who belonged to carnivore groups on social media. Of course, a survey is inherently lacking objectivity in some pretty big ways. For one thing, only people who had been on the diet for at least six months were invited to take the survey. It stands to reason that if someone had a worsening of symptoms after, say, two months — they would probably stop the diet. And, for another, the group of people “surveyed” were themselves members of identity groups that subscribe to the ideology of the diet enough to belong to a group of fellow adherents.

This seems kind of like asking a group of fish if they enjoy swimming; you’re unlikely to get an unbiased opinion.

Nevertheless, in the context of this less-than-objective methodology, many of the survey respondents reported high levels of satisfaction and improvements in overall health and well-being, including cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, which they attributed to their diet.

There are many possible reasons for these alleged improvements. Of course, the carnivore diet could have been helpful, at least in the short run, for this particular collection of people. Or it may be a case of the placebo effect, which can, at least in the short run, lead to dramatic benefits for a great many people.

But mental gains can also be plausibly explained by what carnivore dieters have eliminated: substances like alcohol, refined sugars, and processed foods. It’s not hard to imagine many people feeling better after giving those up.

Diet is one of the key lifestyle factors that can be modified to significantly reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. But it’s plant-based diets that contain key nutrients like polyphenols and fiber that protect against the insulin resistance that can lead to Alzheimer’s.

There’s also solid evidence that plant-based foods can boost mood. Plus, the more saturated fat (remember that for most people the vast majority of the saturated fat in their diet comes from animal products) that people consume, the higher their risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders. Mono- and polyunsaturated plant fats, on the other hand, reduce that risk.

If there’s one food that you can think of as a brain superfood, it’s actually leafy greens — although greens are not allowed on a strict carnivore diet. However, in one study, those who ate the most greens were the proud owners of brains that were functionally 11 years younger than those who ate the fewest.

Other brain protectors include berries — eating blueberries and strawberries delayed cognitive decline by two and a half years in one study. Some interpretations of the carnivore diets do allow fruit — ostensibly because plants “want” us to eat their fruit to spread their seeds.

Carnivore Diets, Inflammation, and Autoimmune Conditions

In the same somewhat dubious survey discussed above, some respondents wrote that adopting a carnivore diet led to improvements in various inflammatory conditions. Out of hundreds of survey respondents with prior autoimmune conditions, 10% claimed complete resolution, and another 14% reported improvement.

Mikhaila Peterson also claims she healed her autoimmune issues through the “Lion Diet” and referenced those survey results in her TEDx talk as corroborating evidence. (TEDx refused to publish her talk, explaining that it failed to adhere to their content guidelines and lacked nuance, offering a purely anecdotal experience and no actual scientific evidence.)

A core mechanism of autoimmune disease is a malfunctioning immune system. While we don’t yet understand the causes and initial triggers of many autoimmune conditions, we know that lifestyle choices, particularly related to food, can play a key role in managing and, in some cases, even reversing many of these diseases.

But it’s plant-based diets that have been proven to help with inflammation and autoimmune disease. Meat and high-fat, animal protein-rich diets on the other hand, especially red meat, have consistently been associated with more inflammation.

So how do we reconcile the science with the experience of Mikhaila Peterson and other carnivore diet adherents? It’s possible that a body in an inflamed state could find certain compounds in plants triggering, and that, in some cases, taking a break could provide relief.

But this is not a great long-term solution. Rather than live in a metaphorical “food bubble” in which nothing challenges the chronically inflamed body, the goal should be to bring down inflammation so that eating plants — which offer myriad powerful health benefits — doesn’t cause symptoms. Traditional elimination diets can allow for a more methodical and less draconian approach.

Carnivore Diets and Digestion

A study that is objectively even less rigorous than the social media study already mentioned asked a couple hundred carnivore dieters about their “beliefs and experiences.” Here as well, dieters claimed improvements in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and Crohn’s disease.

But again, the vast majority of objective research points to carnivorous dietary patterns contributing to a greater likelihood of IBD, not remission from it.

Advocates of carnivore diets claim that plant foods are high in toxins and harmful compounds like antinutrients, those nasty compounds plants produce to discourage us from eating them.

And it’s true that when isolated from the foods that contain them, antinutrients may lead to some unwanted effects. But when consumed as part of a varied whole foods diet, they participate in diverse and complex interactions with vitamins, minerals, and the gut microbiome, and can actually contribute to significant health benefits.

Another explanation for why some people experience improved digestion during the initial phase of a carnivore diet is the complete absence of fiber. However, if someone was already consuming low amounts of fiber — and only 6% of the US population gets the recommended amount — they likely lacked the microbial diversity required to adequately digest that fiber.

Fiber increases microbial diversity and gut health; studies show those consuming the most fermented and fiber-rich plant foods had a more diverse gut microbiome — and a stronger immune system, with decreased inflammatory markers — compared to those who consumed less.

Meat, of course, contains zero fiber, and therefore a meat-only diet is not a recipe for long-term health. On the contrary, one meta-analysis study found every 10 grams of fiber consumed per day cuts mortality risk by 10%.

Carnivore Diet Risks and Side Effects

We’ve looked at the purported benefits of carnivore diets. But what about the risks? Is there the possibility of unwanted and serious side effects?

In fact, there are many anecdotal reports of unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects with extremely low-carb or zero-carb diets. These include diarrhea, constipation, weight gain, muscle cramps, hair loss or thinning, insomnia, dry skin, itchiness, heart rate changes, brittle fingernails, and menstrual irregularity.

Bowel irregularity, whether diarrhea or constipation, is typically caused by a lack of dietary fiber. But many of the other symptoms are attributable to nutritional deficiencies and imbalances that can occur in any extreme diet that lacks diversity. The carnivore diet, in particular, is missing not just fiber but also antioxidants, polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and prebiotics — all of which are essential for good health.

Without vitamin C from fruits, vegetables, or supplements, carnivore dieters are actually at risk for scurvy, putting them in the company of 17th-century British sailors. And vitamin C and other antioxidants are important for combating free radicals in the body. How serious is that? The buildup of free radicals, or “oxidative stress,” is a leading cause of deterioration and disease, including memory loss, autoimmune disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

Most dietitians, even those who don’t advocate for plant-based diets, consider carnivore diets dangerous for humans. Animal protein is associated with heart disease and poor markers of metabolic health such as type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Red and processed meats are considered carcinogenic, with particular contributions to colorectal cancer. And as we saw earlier, high animal product consumption is also associated with Alzheimer’s, inflammation, and autoimmune diseases.

Meat also promotes the growth of unfavorable bacteria that leads to the production of TMAO, which inflames the endothelium (the inner lining of blood vessels) and further promotes heart disease.

And high-meat diets can deliver worrisome quantities of heme iron, which has prooxidant effects that promote cardiovascular disease.

Eating plant foods, on the other hand, has consistently contributed to a reduction in chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer while promoting longevity.

All in all, relying almost solely on animal-derived foods goes against most medical and nutrition advice which is that eating more whole plant foods and less meat, eggs, and dairy is actually the healthiest way to eat.

Carnivore Diets’ Environmental Impacts

When we evaluate the health of a diet, it makes sense to look at how it impacts not just the individuals following it, but the planet as a whole. And eating mostly meat has serious implications for the environment.

Adopting a meat-free, and especially beef-free, diet is one of the most powerful things an individual can do to help fight climate change. That’s because animal agriculture is like a protein factory in reverse, cycling amino acids through animals instead of sourcing them directly from plants.

Shifting from animal to plant foods can also significantly decrease the amount of land required for agriculture, which in turn can lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation, especially in the Amazon rainforest — one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Forests are being cut down not just to provide grazing land for cattle, but also to create fields to grow crops that get turned into animal feed. And grass-fed meat is not much better either, as it can use even more land per pound of food produced.

Additionally, most cattle feed in the industrialized world is bioengineered (aka GMO), which contributes to a number of environmental and health problems globally.

At the risk of stating the obvious, eating nothing but animal products is not great for the animals either. More demand for meat means more animals slaughtered to meet that demand. And the overwhelming majority of that meat is produced in factory farms.

Animals so confined are given huge quantities of antibiotics to fatten them up and to keep them alive — drugs that are contributing to the alarming rise in antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

In short, what’s bad for the animals also ends up being bad for us.

Carnivore Diets Are Not Healthy — for People or the Planet

The carnivore diet’s alleged benefits have sparked fierce debate in the wellness world. But the scientific basis for these claims remains limited and inconclusive at best. While some individuals report success alleviating autoimmune conditions and experiencing weight loss through total elimination of carbohydrates, and of course I wish these people nothing but the best of health, there has so far not been a single comprehensive study suggesting that the results are replicable or sustainable.

Given what we do know about nutrition, it seems likely that you can achieve similar or better results using moderate caloric restriction, or with an elimination diet. And both of these methods are likely going to be far more healthful than eating nothing but meat and other animal products.

There are also concerns about potential nutritional deficiencies, chronic disease impact, and environmental ethics of meat-centric diets. From a global perspective, these diets magnify the environmental harms associated with meat production. And by eliminating plant foods, carnivore diet followers are missing out on powerful dietary compounds proven to increase longevity and improve health outcomes.

As researchers continue to investigate the impact of diet on our well-being, it’s evident that incorporating a wide array of nutrient sources, not limiting them, holds the key to promoting both individual health and global sustainability.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you know anyone who’s adopted a carnivore diet?
• What do you think of the carnivore diet?
• How much do environmental concerns influence what you eat?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Luke Chan

Read Next:

• What’s All Wrong About Annals Of Internal Medicine’s Red and Processed Meat Advice

The post The Carnivore Diet: What the Research Really Says About its Impact on People and the Planet appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If wasted food is not composted, it ends up in a landfill. There it releases the greenhouse gas methane, which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. What’s more, the bacteria formed from the decay of food in landfills can run off into freshwater, where they form toxic algae blooms that threaten humans, fish, and entire ecosystems. 

What’s shocking is that in the United States alone, 30–40% of fresh produce ends up in the trash due to spoilage. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), approximately 17% of this is happening in restaurants and American households. And, not just to call out the US — food waste is a major issue around the world.

Here’s another shocking statistic: The food that is wasted could feed 1.26 billion hungry people worldwide — every year. 

Given that the amount of wasted food can put a dent in your wallet, contribute to climate change, contaminate freshwater, and potentially feed hungry people, it’s important to consider ways of keeping produce fresh and using up food before it becomes inedible.

How to Keep Produce Fresh in the Fridge

As you watch the accompanying video, you’ll get several tips on how to preserve fresh fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator. 

But one of the most effective tips in keeping produce fresh for longer is to separate out ethylene gas-producing fruits and vegetables. Ethylene-producing produce, like apples and peaches, can accelerate ripening and lead to spoilage of nearby produce. So unless you want to ripen something quickly, store these produce items in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator either in a designated produce bag or paper bag to keep them separate. 

A note about your crisper drawer — it’s designed to have just enough humidity and air circulation to prevent things from going limp and losing moisture. Some refrigerators may have drawers that allow you to adjust the humidity or temperature separately. But in general, the rule is vegetables prefer high humidity, and fruit prefer low humidity.

The take-home message? Use your crisper drawer for what it’s made for — produce storage (not for storing your plant-based cheese or leftover soup!). 

While we’re on the topic of moisture, it’s a tricky thing when it comes to storing your produce. Somewhat like Goldilocks and the Three Bears — you want just the right amount of moisture to prevent produce from drying up, but not too much to cause it to get slimy and moldy. 

First and foremost, ensure that your produce is completely dry before storing it in the refrigerator. One way to ensure this is to wash fruits and vegetables just before use rather than as soon as you get them. 

Also, set your refrigerator to the appropriate temperature, usually between 33-40°F (0-4°C), to keep your food from spoiling. While this may be obvious, it’s worth checking the temperature you’re refrigerating at (go ahead, I’ll wait while you check!). 

For more on food storage, visit our article, Food Storage & Preservation: Why It Matters and How to Do It Properly. 

How to Keep Produce Fresh on the Counter

Root veggies (like potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips) and certain fruits (like bananas, tomatoes, avocados, and melons) do best when stored on the countertop at room temperature. You’ll want to ensure there’s good airflow to prevent moisture buildup, which can lead to mold and spoilage. 

And while some fruits like tomatoes benefit from a little sunlight to ripen, prolonged exposure to direct sunlight can cause them to spoil quickly. Keep countertop produce away from sunlight. Root veggies also do best when stored in a cool, dark area on the counter, or in a cupboard or root cellar. 

Finally, keep those ethylene producers separate from produce that is ethylene sensitive (I’m looking at you, onions and sweet potatoes!), which will prevent accelerated ripening and help extend shelf life.

Further Tips on Avoiding Food Waste

Aside from proper food storage, there are a number of ways you can reduce food waste in the kitchen, including making use of excess produce, produce about to spoil, or food scraps.

Watch the video below for 11 tips on how to store your produce, keep it fresh, and use it up.

Recipes to Use Up Produce

Sometimes figuring out what will last the longest can feel like a full-time job. But if you’re struggling to keep up with the freshness of the fruit and vegetables you bring home from the market, these recipes can easily help you figure out what to eat now and what to eat later. These tasty, minimal-waste recipes are a great way to help you prepare your ingredients ahead of time and encourage creative utilization during peak freshness and nutrition. What’s more, if you are a fan of batch cooking, each of these recipes offers ideas for how to extend the life of your produce!  

1. Slow Cooker Apple Butter

Slow Cooker Apple Butter is a great way to use up any surplus of apples. Depending on how you cut the apples, the only items left behind are the seeds and the stems. Once the apples have been stewing, they transform into a silky smooth butter that makes a wholesome addition to your favorite bowl of oats, a topping for breakfast hotcakes, or as a sweet dipping sauce for a delicious fruit board. What’s more, if you prepare this recipe in large batches, you can prolong the usability of your apples by freezing the apple butter for up to three months. 

2. The Shine Brightly Salad

The main ingredients in this salad are a few common produce items that often go to waste. So this salad was created to allow you to experience the textures and unique qualities that these plant-based foods have to offer, especially when combined. With proper preparation and storage, you can let the full flavor and nutrition of spinach, blueberries, red onion, and toasted sunflower seeds shine. Then, once you’re finished eating the Shine Brightly Salad, don’t be surprised if you’re also shining from the inside out!

3. Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale

Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chickpeas and Kale is a super cozy bowl of nourishing plants that provides nourishment in more ways than one. In addition to the soup’s mouthwatering flavors from mushrooms, chickpeas, kale, and cashews, it does double duty in the no-waste department. Whether your produce is on the verge of decline or you want to make it completely zero waste, toss in all the veggies (plus stems — just be sure to chop them finely) and enjoy a savory, nourishing, and comforting meal that’s good for you and the planet!

Don’t Let Produce Go to Waste

To avoid food waste, save money, preserve nutrition and flavor, and support the health of the planet, you may want to adjust the way you store fresh produce. Having a better understanding of which fruits and vegetables should be stored in the refrigerator and which thrive best on the counter — and which to store together or separately — can also minimize spoilage and maximize the nutritional value of fresh produce. 

Using up fresh produce before it goes bad and reusing food scraps can also further decrease contributions to worldwide food waste. By implementing these simple yet effective food storage tips, you can play your part in reducing food waste and creating a more sustainable food system.

Tell us in the comments:

• How do you store your produce?

• Which one of the 11 tips to reduce food waste from the video will you try first?

• What’s your favorite way to use up produce that’s nearing its end?

Featured Image: iStock.com/VioletaStoimenova

Read Next:

• How To Reduce Food Waste
• How to Use Food Scraps to Reduce Kitchen Waste

The post How to Cook: How to Keep Produce Fresh to Avoid Food Waste appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Look down. You may not see the soil beneath your feet as teeming with life, but it is.

Better scientific tools are helping us understand that dirt isn’t just dirt. Life in the soil includes microbes like bacteria and fungi, invertebrates such as earthworms and nematodes, plant roots, and even mammals like gophers and badgers who spend part of their time below ground.

It’s commonly said that a quarter of all the planet’s biodiversity lives in the soil, but that’s likely a vast understatement. Many species that reside there, particularly microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protists, aren’t yet known to science.

“Published literature has only just begun to unravel the complexity of soil biological systems,” a 2020 study by researchers from the University of Reading found. “We barely know what is there, let alone their breadth of functional roles, niche partitioning, and interaction between these organisms.”

But what scientists do know is that healthy and biodiverse soil communities support a wide variety of functions that sustain life on Earth. That includes nutrient cycling, food production, carbon storage, and water filtration.

What happens belowground supports life aboveground. And not surprisingly, if that underground biodiversity is threatened, so are the important functions that soil performs.

“When soil organisms begin to disappear, ecosystems will soon start to underperform, potentially hindering their vital functions for humankind,” wrote researchers in a 2020 Science study.

Threats to Soil Biodiversity

Land changes [like intensive agriculture] are right up there with climate change because what we’re doing is tearing up the soil. And that’s the habitat for all these species.

Diana H. Wall, Professor at Colorado State University

Unfortunately, there’s evidence that soil biodiversity is decreasing today — how badly is still a matter researchers are working to determine. By just one metric, studies found that 60–70% of soils in the European Union are now unhealthy.

The threats there — and across the world — are numerous.

The Reading University researchers narrowed them down to five main areas:

• Human exploitation, including intensive agriculture, pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms.
• Land use changes like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and soil sealing.
• Soil degradation from compaction, erosion, and loss of nutrients.
• Climate change, which influences temperature and moisture.
• The growing threat from plastic pollution.

“Land changes [like intensive agriculture] are right up there with climate change,” says Diana H. Wall, a biology professor at Colorado State University and director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. “Because what we’re doing is tearing up the soil. And that’s the habitat for all these species.”

When we lose biodiversity in the soil, it leads to a decrease in the soil’s ability to withstand disturbances — that could cause a loss of important functions and even more biodiversity.

Knowledge Gaps

Much like new molecular tools have helped researchers understand the microbiome in people’s guts, scientists can now also learn much more about the tiny organisms living in the soil, says Wall. But while research about soil biodiversity is growing, there are still significant knowledge gaps.

A 2020 study on “blind spots” in global soil biodiversity and ecosystem function found that most research focused on a single sampling event and didn’t study how soil changed in the same area over time, which the authors say is “essential for assessing trends in key taxa and functions, and their vulnerability to global change.”

The research has also been geographically unbalanced, they found. Temperate areas, which include broad-leaved mixed forests and the Mediterranean, have received more study than many tropical areas, tundra, or flooded grasslands.

This is not a new problem: Another study revealed that we lack historical information on soil biodiversity that would make it possible to understand baselines on previous land cover and local drivers of biodiversity. Without understanding past conditions, it’s not clear how things are changing or why.

Knowledge gaps aren’t just limited to science, either. When it comes to policy, national and international bodies lack systematic ways to monitor and protect soil biodiversity.

“At the global scale, soil biodiversity is still a blind spot: Most parties of the Convention on Biodiversity neither protect soils nor their biodiversity explicitly,” found a study published in April in Biological Conservation.

Taking Action

Efforts to better study and protect soil biodiversity have begun to ramp up.

One is the Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), co-led by Wall, which is a coordinated global project to monitor soil biodiversity and ecosystem function to help inform policy.

Wall also leads the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, a volunteer scientific network of more than 4,000 researchers who are studying the vulnerability of belowground biodiversity. The group recently sent a letter to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity urging action to protect soil biodiversity.

“Knowledge of the importance of the vast diversity of fauna and flora that inhabit soil and sustain all life aboveground should be recognized and included in global policies for the protection, restoration, and promotion of biodiversity,” the group wrote.

Europe isn’t waiting for the UN to take action.

The Farm to Fork Strategy, part of the European Green New Deal, calls for better soil protection, including cutting pesticide use in half by 2030. The European Union also launched the Zero Pollution Action Plan for Air, Water, and Soil, which aims to improve soil quality. And the EU could push further action with a planned Soil Health Law in 2023.

And while soil health demands more big government efforts, there are a lot of changes at the local level and by industries that could help.

In urban areas, pavement that has sealed-off soil can be removed and replaced by vegetation. The construction of green roofs and gardens rich in plant diversity can aid soil biodiversity, too.

Farmers, Wall says, have also expressed increasing interest in soil regeneration and carbon sequestration. “There are definitely things that you can do to return the organic matter to the soil,” she says. “What we want is good cover for soil, so it doesn’t blow away or wash away. And we also want to make sure that we’re not just cutting vegetation down to bare ground.”

Pay attention to the life beneath your feet — it’s fragile.

Diana H. Wall

Society also needs to be mindful of the chemicals that we use in our homes, farms, and cities, she says: “Pollution in soil is very bad for the organisms that live in the soil, and it’s bad for any that may have a pupating cycle in the soil.”

Soil biodiversity can recover after industrial or agricultural sites are taken out of production, but it may happen slowly and require specialized restoration efforts. In those cases, “microbial transplants together with seeding of target plant species might help speed up these processes,” suggests a 2019 study coauthored by Wall. “Even small changes, which often come at little monetary cost, may increase soil biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

And an even smaller change is also important — getting people to notice and appreciate the role healthy soil plays in our lives and why it’s so vital we protect it.

“Something that we really ought to realize is that soil isn’t forever,” Wall says. “Soils are vulnerable, and we know that worldwide. Pay attention to the life beneath your feet — it’s fragile.”

—–

Tell us in the comments:

• Were you aware that soil is full of life?

• What threats to soil biodiversity are most concerning to you?

• How can you contribute to soil biodiversity in your own garden?

Featured Image: iStock.com/PhotographyFirm

Read Next:

• By Reconnecting With Soil, We Heal People — and the Planet

The post “Soil Isn’t Forever”: Why Biodiversity Also Needs Protection Below the Ground appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

In 2002, Deirdre Birmingham and her husband, John Biondi, bought a 166-acre farm in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless region. On a portion of that land — once used to raise cattle and grow feed crops like corn, soybeans, and alfalfa — they planted apple and pear trees to make fermented ciders.

On a larger, spring-fed portion, abutting the orchard and en route to meadow and oak forest, they seeded in Indian and June and bluestem grasses, echinacea and bergamot, spiderwort and blazing stars, restoring a portion of the region’s native prairie. They knew this would benefit beleaguered wild bees, but they weren’t fully aware how this decision to rewild their landscape would help the farm, too.

Two decades later, on June 14, 2022, the weather turned unseasonably hot. After tedious cold and wet weeks, temperatures swelled throughout the morning until they hit the high of 90°F.

“We had this record-breaking heat and the trees just fast-forwarded into blossom, and dandelions and so many other things also went into bloom,” Birmingham said. “I could see wild bees on our pears, and I thought, they just have tons of work to do, and a lot of choices” of flowers to visit. She worried they’d skip her orchard’s 16,000 trees, which, like many food plants, rely on pollinators to produce a crop. Honeybees, which are trucked in to perform this task on orchards around the nation, were nowhere to be found — her beekeeper neighbor’s shipment was late.

To her surprise, though, local wild pollinators like bumble, sweat, and mason bees, nesting in the restored prairie, did all the pollination work. The result: a bountiful apple crop. “The wild will do it for you,” Birmingham said.

A Refugium for Pollinators

There’s plenty of research that supports Birmingham’s experience of wild bees’ relevance in pollinating crops like tree fruits, blueberries, and cranberries, and the role diverse plantings play in giving bees a needed forage and habitat boost. That’s why USDA and conservation nonprofits like the Xerces Society encourage farmers to plant buffers like pollinator strips — wide swaths of flowering plants adjacent to crop fields. (Birmingham got help from both.)

But there may be more going on between Birmingham’s plants and bees in this era of climate change. Her property, with its multifaceted landscape of forest and crop trees, hedgerows, and prairie, has the hallmarks of a refugium.

Refugia (from the Latin for shelter and first used in biology in the 1940s) are viewed as “relatively buffered” from climate change and a haven for vulnerable species. A refugium might be found in a sheltered valley along a river, with plenty of cover from trees. As extreme heat and drought wither plants, obliterate pollen, dry up water sources and make it harder for bees to function or find food — not to mention, threaten the human food supply — a refugium’s cooler, damper microclimate could help all manner of species survive.

In fact, refugia have played a critical role in protecting species before. During the last Ice Age, the woodland ringlet butterfly, common European viper, brown bear, black hellebore, and mountain ash hunkered down in warmer microclimates to survive the cycle of extreme cold. When things warmed up, they reemerged and repopulated parts of the planet.

Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms to Combat Climate Change

Researchers are now looking at ways this might work in our age of rising temperatures, and the role that farms might play in enhancing biodiversity. The UN Environment Program found that food and agriculture currently drive 70% of species loss, through deforestation, grassland conversion, chemical use, and other changes to the landscape. But farms like Birmingham’s might help counter that trend at a time when climate change is accelerating the threat to species.

For example, in a “complex landscape structure” like Birmingham’s, tree canopy provides cooling shade; densely planted trees and woody shrubs (i.e., hedgerows) block wind to prevent the land from drying out; soil covered with low-lying cover crops retain moisture; and flora move moisture into the air to lower the surrounding temperature. All of this helps bees, birds, and the plants themselves.

At Dru Rivers’ Full Belly organic farm in California’s northern Capay Valley — about a 90-minute drive from the Bay Area — she and her partners planted hedgerows over 30 years ago, including some that yield crops, like pomegranates and olives. The farm’s 400 acres also produce about 100 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, through which they rotate cover crops.

All of those choices enhanced the soil. So when torrential rains from the state’s unprecedented atmospheric river hit this past January, the porous soil managed to absorb all the water rather than flooding the farm. And, said Rivers, “We have the firm belief that our healthy soil helped in the drought” that hammered California over the last three years. “We still have really vibrant orchards.”

As Full Belly’s plant life has survived extremes, so, too, has extensive wildlife. Studies found that Full Belly provides so much welcoming habitat that they virtually “grow[s] their own [wild] bees,” making honeybee pollination unnecessary.

Full Belly also supports a vast amount of birdlife, including wood ducks, western bluebirds, and red-shouldered hawks. Although researchers haven’t recorded temperatures in the farm’s microclimate, it bears the hallmarks of a refugium, and “the greenness of it is comforting, even for people habitat,” Rivers says.

The UN Environment Program found that food and agriculture currently drive 70% of species loss, through deforestation, grassland conversion, chemical use, and other changes to the landscape.

Data show that the best climate-mitigating effect comes from a mosaic of landscape types, with more greenery producing greater benefits. These “dampen the impact of extreme weather events, be it high temperature, extreme drought, extreme precipitation,” wrote Jonas Lembrechts, an ecologist at the University of Antwerp, in an email. “Such ‘green solutions’ can certainly be highlighted as one of the better climate adaption scenarios a person can do.”

Conservation for Species Survival

These habitats are plentiful in nature, too. Scientists around the world have been locating existing refugia and tallying their various soil types, water availability, and slope direction, all of which play a role in creating nurturing microclimates.

One meadow refugium in a Sierra Nevada, California valley was found to be 18 degrees cooler than surrounding mountainsides; researchers identified 400 plant and 100 bird species on just 800 acres. “Especially at night, the cooling effect of nature reserves can reach to 2 kilometers (nearly one mile),” Lembrechts wrote, expanding a refugium’s reach.

These protective reserves are critical for the future of species. Refugia, in general, “harbor large amounts of genetic diversity, so I guess that gives some hope,” said biologist Matthew Koski at Clemson University, because the species that survive in these microclimates can potentially evolve. “So conserving these regions is extremely important.”

One challenge: “What if these refugia are kept to very small, protected areas and then developed around? That’s going to be totally problematic because it’s likely that those population sizes will decline,” he said — unless some connectivity between microhabitats can be established. Work is already underway in the US to address those problems, with solutions like pollinator corridors in rural and urban areas.

The Importance of Microclimates

A recent study pointed out that even a farm that supports a monoculture like wheat is often scattered with less-productive tracts suitable for habitat. Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis, a landscape ecologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada at Canada’s National Wildlife Research Centre has been studying 30 agricultural landscapes in Ontario. She sees particular promise in hedgerows, under which she’s found summer temperatures to be “remarkably” cooler than on adjacent crop fields, sometimes by nearly 15°F. (Lembrechts found a similar scenario in Flemish gardens.) The more trees, the more cooling effects from direct shading and wind movement patterns.

Treed hedgerows, in particular “can maximize biodiversity of beneficial insects and provide co-benefits for climate mitigation,” concluded research co-conducted by Naujokaitis-Lewis.

That doesn’t mean refugia are immune to the stresses of extreme weather. “Microclimates that are a few degrees cooler might be enough to weather a short period of extreme heat or drought, but eventually pollinators need to leave their relative safety to forage for food,” said Grant Duffy, an ecologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

And plants will eventually succumb to persistent scorch and lack of water, even if your “soil sponge,” as Lembrechts calls it, helps out for a while.

Nevertheless, a range of plants that bloom across the span of a bee’s life might allow it to stay put in a protected oasis longer. “Anything that adds more habitat complexity is going to create more microclimate variability [to give] pollinators… a better range of options when temperatures are especially warm (or cold), so they can avoid the worst of those extremes,” Duffy said.

Anything that adds more habitat complexity is going to create more microclimate variability [to give] pollinators… a better range of options when temperatures are especially warm (or cold), so they can avoid the worst of those extremes.

Grant Duffy, University of Otago

In other words, refugia could buy species some time: first to adapt, then to wend their way toward more comfortable areas. “All animals can survive within certain critical thermal limits — the lower and higher temperatures at which they die — which they achieve by something we call plasticity, or acclimation,” said Hester Weaving, an entomologist at the University of Bristol. Insects can adapt to heat by producing heat shock proteins, for example.

“You can imagine that this process could be really useful for climate change, because, different from evolution, which is occurring over many generations and might be too slow, acclimation can happen within hours.” How plastic are insects, including bees? Not very, a recent study of Weaving’s revealed. “That’s when you know these microclimates are going to be really important for [their] survival,” she said.

Hope for the Future of Pollinators

Agricultural landscapes with a robust array of plants will likely become even more important as temperatures warm. “When we create pollinator-friendly habitat, we create larger populations of pollinators that are going to have a better capacity to adapt to future changes,” said biologist Jessica Forrest of the University of Ottawa, who studies how climate change affects plant-pollinator interactions. The bigger those populations are, “the more chance there is that one individual’s got a mutation that allows it to tolerate whatever new environmental condition is coming along.”

Sadly, those benefits aren’t recognized often enough. Naujokaitis-Lewis, for example, has encountered farmers bent on removing hedgerows from their property to keep them from toppling onto fields in intensifying storms, fully unaware of the climatic advantages of keeping them intact. Birmingham, meanwhile, has experienced these advantages firsthand. Two years ago, her landscape proved its greater worth. “We had a drought year that didn’t faze our prairie because these plants are so deep-rooted,” she said. Not only did her fruit trees get pollinated; her wild bees survived and thrived in their habitat.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you know of any local farms working to restore pollinator habitats?

• Have you observed any changes in the number of bees and other pollinators in your area?

• How can you create more pollinator-friendly habitats within your community or in your backyard?

Featured Image: iStock.com/oltrelautostrada

Read Next:

• Why the Global “Insect Apocalypse” is Concerning & What You Can Do About It
• Bring Back the Bees: How to Plant a Bee-Friendly Garden

The post A Chilling Effect: How Farms Can Help Pollinators Survive the Stress of Climate Change appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

In short, I learned that eating animal-based foods was not only totally okay in my tradition, but expected. And in the case of the springtime Passover holiday, or Pesach, it was required.

The ritual meal that occurs the first two nights of Passover is called the Seder (which means “order,” as there’s a list of 10 rituals that must be completed in order). And there are a couple of foods of animal origin that appear on the Seder plate: a shank bone and a hard-boiled egg.

At the same time, there’s a strong ethical tradition within Judaism that seems to argue against eating animals. When I started flirting with vegetarianism in my mid-teens, it seemed a logical extension of what my religion had taught me about compassion, justice, and my responsibility toward the world and its creatures.

And it turns out, I wasn’t alone as a Jew exploring a plant-based diet. Israel has the highest percentage of vegans per capita in the world — approximately 5% of the population. According to Google Trends, Israelis are among the global leaders in searches on the topic of veganism. And if you don’t mind some name-dropping, the following celebrities (at the time of this writing — fame is fleeting) are members of both the vegan and Jewish communities: Natalie Portman, Mayim Bialik, Peter Singer, and Alicia Silverstone. If we expand into vegetarians, we can also claim Franz Kafka, the Alberts (Einstein and Schweitzer), Allen Ginsberg (can we call him a “beet” poet?), the Spocks (Dr. Benjamin and Leonard Nimoy’s Mister), Ed Asner, and Scarlett Johansson. Also the musical Leonards: Cohen and Kravitz.

In this article, I’ll explore the synergies between veganism and Judaism, in general, and Passover, in particular. We’ll see how Jewish vegans can navigate this eight-day holiday in ways that honor both tradition and personal ethics. And we’ll conclude with some yummy, vegan Passover recipes crafted by the culinary geniuses here at Food Revolution Network.

The Judaism-Veganism Connection

There are several core aspects of Jewish ethics that are incompatible with — if not eating animals — at least the way industrialized animal agriculture handles livestock, humans, and the environment today. These ethics include treating animals with kindness, making sure that all people are fed, caring for the environment, and valuing and preserving human life and health.

Kindness to Animals

There are several admonitions against cruelty to animals in the biblical tradition.

Exodus 23:5 says, “If you see that your enemy’s donkey has collapsed under its load, do not walk by. Instead, stop and help.” Deuteronomy 22:10 forbids a farmer from yoking an ox and an ass together on one plow since the difference in strength would cause suffering for both. And the basis of the set of kosher laws to not eat meat and dairy simultaneously is rooted in the simple admonition, “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” which occurs three times in the Five Books of Moses.

The book of Genesis also appears to portray meat eating as a no-no. The AirBnB instruction booklet for the Garden of Eden would probably imply that animals are not on the menu: “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the Earth, and every tree that has seed-yielding fruit — to you, it shall be for food” (Genesis 1:29). It’s only many generations later, following the flood that nearly wiped out all of humanity because of their wickedness, that the divine rules bend to accommodate a human weakness for animal flesh.

The living tradition of Judaism has reflected this uneasy compromise. In fact, the kosher laws themselves are all about restrictions on how and when one can eat foods of animal origin. The commandments that pertain to ritual slaughter all mandated the most humane, least painful methods available at the time. (The most humane thing, I’d argue, is not to kill them for food in the first place, which is always an option.)

Feeding the Hungry

Giving food to those who are hungry and in need is a fundamental human responsibility. Isaiah 58:7-8 says that when you “share your bread with the hungry, your light breaks forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily, your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Eternal shall be your rear guard.” (Now that’s what I call some serious incentives — it’s like the world’s first infomercial: “But wait — there’s more!”)

One of the main causes of global hunger in the modern world is the inefficient use of agricultural land. Globally, animal agriculture uses up 83% of all arable land while producing just 18% of the calories that end up in human bellies. Eating plant-based can help increase the food supply for people, by eliminating the waste and inefficiency that occurs when we cycle calories through livestock. This can increase supply and also lower the price of food, making it more accessible to those with the fewest resources.

Find out more about how your food choices can impact world hunger.

Caring for the Environment

The Jewish tradition also emphasizes a strong environmental ethic. Biblical laws include Deuteronomy 20:19, which forbids an army that’s besieging an enemy city from cutting down its trees; and Leviticus 25:23, which prohibits perpetual land ownership, because “the land is mine” (i.e., God’s). Considering the environmental costs of animal agriculture, including global climate chaos, habitat loss, and pollution, many contemporary Jews see plant-based eating as a moral imperative for protecting the planet.

Climate change has exacerbated droughts in many parts of the world. And animal agriculture is one of the largest depleters of water. As such, going vegan may enable better stewardship of this precious natural resource.

Another agricultural practice that’s causing environmental devastation is monocropping or the growing of a single crop over huge areas with no diversity. From pesticide and herbicide exposure to habitat loss to the increased risk of predators or pathogens wiping out an entire crop, monocropping threatens entire ecosystems and populations. And much of the monocropped land produces feed for livestock. So avoiding meat and dairy can reduce the demand for this agricultural practice.

For more on this topic, read our article on how your food choices can shape the future of life on Earth.

Preserving Human Health

The Jewish tradition values human life above almost every other value. This concept, Pikuach Nefesh in Hebrew, has been interpreted to mean that it is permitted to break the Sabbath in order to drive someone to the hospital to save their life.

Given what we know about the links between animal foods and chronic conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, choosing to eat a plant-based diet is very much in line with that principle.

A Brief Explainer of Passover

The Jewish tradition, in general, often aligns with the ethical aims of veganism, but what about Passover itself? Passover teaches five valuable lessons for living an effective and successful life: Remembering the past, taking responsibility, staying optimistic, valuing family, and empathy for others. Might these also align with a vegan lifestyle?

Memory and Obligation

Passover commemorates the exodus from Egypt; the story of how an enslaved people achieved freedom. But the Passover Seder is more than a retelling of the story; it’s a reenactment. The foods on the Seder plate are meant to evoke a somatic response: dipping greens in salt water for tears, eating bitter herbs for hardship, chewing on hard, dry matzah, called the “bread of affliction,” to bring ourselves directly into the experience of oppression.

The Seder’s instruction manual, the Haggadah (literally, “the telling), includes this gem: “In every generation, a person must regard themself as though they personally had gone out of Egypt.” The Seder is a metaphorical and food-based experience that reminds us about oppression. And with that knowledge comes the obligation not to oppress others, especially those who are most vulnerable.

Considering that animals are very vulnerable, especially when they are in our care, this sounds like a pretty good reason not to mutilate and cage them in factory farms.

Choice and Responsibility

We remember a most painful time in our history not to wallow in misery, but to experience the transformation from enslaved to free. Interestingly, the word for Egypt used in ancient Hebrew texts is “Mitzrayim,” which translates to “the narrow places.”

Schools of mystical Kabbalistic Judaism read the entire holiday of Passover as a metaphor for the human journey to liberation. Most of us can recognize “narrow places” in our own hearts and minds — conditioned responses to the world, other people, and ourselves that are rooted in fear or false pride.

The Seder lays the choice out before us: we can remain in the narrow places out of fear or habit, going about our lives ignoring most of the suffering that’s around us. Or we can expand our consciousness far beyond ourselves and our immediate environment, and extend our compassion to the entire world.

Hope and Optimism

One of the recurring motifs of the story of Passover is just how “not into it” a lot of the Israelites were. Many of them feared the unknown future more than the oppressive present. And once they were out of Egypt and in the desert, they freaked out and demanded to return to the place where they knew they would get fed and housed.

The Seder is an opportunity to embody hope in the midst of hopelessness. To strive toward a better tomorrow even though its outlines are too fuzzy to apprehend. To take individual action to make the world better, even as part of us cowers at the enormity of the problems we face.

Distributed Leadership

Arguably, Moses is the protagonist of the Passover story, with the Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh, assuming the role of villain. And indeed, Pharaoh gets a lot of air time in the Haggadah. But do you know who isn’t mentioned? Moses. (Technically, his name appears in a very esoteric discussion among a bunch of later rabbis about the exact number of miracles that God performed, but you get the idea.)

There are many possible explanations for this omission, but my favorite is to encourage people not to put their faith in leaders and not to despair when a leader isn’t present, but rather to become the leaders they’ve been waiting for.

This squares perfectly with a plant-based approach to making the world a better and kinder place. We don’t have to wait for a leader or for any particular party to win an election, or wait until laws change. We can “be the change,” and participate, with our individual actions, in what could become massive communal and even global transformations.

Modeling to Evoke Curiosity and Empathy

The Seder kicks off with a child (or the youngest person present) asking the “four questions.” They begin with the general query, “Why is this night different from all the other nights?” And each question is triggered by something on the table that’s out of the ordinary: dipping bowls full of salt water; flatbread instead of a risen loaf; a couple of bitter vegetables. There are also cushions to recline on rather than sitting up straight at the table.

The Seder is like an interactive theatrical experience that’s initiated by a person who’s curious about what they’re seeing. Plant-based eaters can also stimulate curiosity in others who see us choose vegan options in place of more familiar animal-based foods. When we live in harmony with our values, we can stir the question, “Why is this person different or doing things differently?” So our daily choices can also become an expression of our advocacy.

Veganizing the Haggadah and Seder Plate

While we’ve already seen that a bone and egg are traditional elements of the Passover Seder ritual, most of the other items on the Seder plate are already plant-based.

• Karpas: a raw vegetable, often parsley or celery, that’s dipped in salt water to represent new life
• Matzah: the unleavened bread that symbolizes hardship and recalls the hasty flight from Egypt that didn’t leave enough time for the dough to rise
• Maror: the bitter herb, often a horseradish root, that recalls the bitterness of our ancestors’ suffering under slavery
• Charoset: a sweet mixture of chopped fruits, nuts, and wine that looks (but fortunately doesn’t taste) like the mortar used by Israelite slaves
• Hazeret: the second bitter herb or vegetable, often romaine lettuce or endive

The shank bone recalls the lamb slaughtered to provide sustenance and strength to the fleeing Israelites, and the blood painted on their doorframes to signal to the Angel of Death to “pass over” those homes while visiting the last of the 10 plagues on the Egyptians.

The egg symbolizes the continuation of life; the rebirth from slavery to freedom. As part of the ritual, it’s dipped in salt water to remind us that life, while good, can also provoke tears.

If you go beyond the symbols and look at what they represent, you can easily substitute other food items that don’t require animal suffering to produce.

In place of a shank bone, vegans can substitute a roasted beet to invoke blood. This isn’t a modern innovation either. The ancient tractate (written work) of the Babylonian Talmud religious text that deals with Passover permits the use of a beet in place of an animal bone.

Other modern takes on a veganized shank bone include two mushrooms held together by a toothpick or skewer (resembling a bone), and a pomegranate, whose red juice is also evocative of blood.

In place of the egg, Jewish Veg suggests a flower, invoking the promise of spring “without contributing to the pain and misery of egg-laying hens.” Another symbol of the potential for new life is the seed, so a small pile of sunflower or sesame seeds can also serve. And vegan cookbook author Nava Atlas reminds us that a boiled and peeled white potato can preserve both the shape of the egg and its ability to taste yummy after being dipped in salt water.

Jewish Veg has created a vegan Haggadah that you can download, print, and use at a Pesach Seder.

Vegan Passover Seder Recipes

Ready for a vegan Passover meal? Angelic Deviled Potatoes can rock the Seder plate in place of eggs or get served as a side dish. Warm up with a bowl of Matzah Ball Soup and Creamy Plant-Powered Kugel for some traditional Jewish comfort food. And for a hefty dose of veggies, we’ve got Slow Cooker Alicha Denich and Chicory Salad (Hazeret) with Sweet Mustard Dressing. Let’s not forget our take on the Seder shank bone with the Beet “Shank bone” Braised in Horseradish Cream Sauce. Last but not least, we have a Classic Charoset — made with unsweetened grape juice instead of wine — that adds a delicious sweetness to your Passover Seder. Yum!

1. Angelic Deviled Potatoes

Angelic Deviled Potatoes are a fantastic way to kick off your vegan Passover feast. Potatoes and tofu create a creamy appetizer, similar to a deviled egg, that will satisfy your belly and wow your Passover guests. Keeping Passover traditions alive through vegan food never tasted so good!

2. Matzah Ball Soup

Matzah Ball Soup is an essential addition to any Passover recipe round-up! Our version uses fresh parsley and dill in the chickpea-based matzah balls for a plant-based twist. The delectable broth features fresh veggies and herbs for maximum flavor. This delicious plant-based soup will warm you up and bring your family together during the Passover season — what could be better?

3. Chicory Salad with Sweet Mustard Dressing

Serve up a burst of flavor with this Chicory Salad with Sweet Mustard Dressing! Endive and radicchio, two slightly bitter greens, offer a hearty contrast to tangy vinaigrettes and citrus — perfect for your vegan Passover recipes. Try alongside Creamy Plant-Powered Kugel and get ready to have all your taste buds doing a happy dance.

4. Creamy Plant-Powered Kugel

This Passover noodle kugel is a must-try! Kugel is a baked casserole, typically made with egg noodles or potatoes, and is a wonderful dish to bring family, friends, and community members together over good food and conversation. We’ve substituted egg noodles with whole grain (or legume) noodles, added some broccoli and spinach, and used a veggie-centric, dairy-free, creamy sauce to make it exceptionally delicious!

5. Braised Beet “Shank bone” with Horseradish Cream Sauce

Earthy beets are transformed into tender vegan “shank bones” by simmering in a tangy, savory, and sweet veggie-based broth. Vibrant fresh herbs and umami-rich alliums add another layer of flavor that infuses the beets as they braise. These mouthwatering beets are truly a wholesome treat and make a show-stopping centerpiece for an extra special plant-based Passover meal. Sprinkle with fresh parsley and dollop with Horseradish Cream Sauce to tie it all together.

6. Slow Cooker Alicha Denich

Alicha Denich is a stew that’s often incorporated into Passover meals by Ethiopian Jews. Cabbage and potatoes are simmered low and slow with an abundance of powerful herbs and spices. Regardless of your ethnicity, it could be a great fit for your celebratory Passover meal, too. Give this hearty and colorful side dish a try!

7. Charoset

No Passover meal is complete without a sweet bowl of charoset to share amongst friends and loved ones. Traditionally, charoset is a sweet relish made with fruits, nuts, spices, as well as wine, and a binder such as honey. Our version is a delicious blend of apples, almonds, walnuts, and dates soaked in natural grape juice and perfectly spiced with just the right amount of cinnamon. Check out the Chef’s Notes for suggestions on how to make this a festive addition to your holiday table!

A Vegan Passover Is Possible

While Passover can be a meat-heavy holiday, veganizing it isn’t difficult. Plant-based substitutions for the ritual bone and egg are not only easy to make but have been accepted in the Jewish tradition for hundreds of years. When you look beyond the symbols of the holiday to its deeper meaning, Passover exemplifies many of the same ethical principles that can underpin vegan living. And by proudly displaying plant-based options on the Seder plate, we can invite our guests to consider how they can express compassion, justice, and hope in their own food choices.

If you’d like to experience a vegan Passover Seder for yourself, Jewish Veg holds an annual virtual “Zeder” (Zoom Seder). It’s typically held on the night of the second Seder, so it won’t conflict with the “main event” the night before. You can go here to get tickets for the Seder that “explores what it means for all living beings to be free.”

Tell us in the comments:

• Have you ever attended a Passover Seder? What was it like?

• If you observe Passover, have you made plant-based dishes for Seder or the rest of the meals?

• What’s one vegan Passover dish you will try for this year’s Seder?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Maglara

Read Next:

• 11 Whole Foods Plant-Based Recipes from Around the World

The post How to Have a Vegan Passover Seder (with Substitutions & 7 Recipes!) appeared first on Food Revolution Network.