Are you thinking purely of the nutritional advantages when choosing your foods, or do you also consider the impact on the environment or ethics of industrialized agriculture when making your choices?

I've been reading lately about the effects commercial farming has on the environment, and it's quite disturbing. The environment and even animal welfare suffer to an extent that is unimaginable. It's not just about how eating whole is better for our health.

The book "Six Arguments for a Greener Diet", by Michael Jacobson of the CSPI, provides some alarming statistics. For example,
..8,500 square miles - The size of the "dead zone" created in the Gulf of Mexico by fertilizer runoff carried by the Mississippi from the Upper Midwest.
..33 million - The number of cars needed to produce the same level of global warming as is caused by the methane gass emitted by livestock and their manure.
0.5 square feet - the amount of space allotted to the average layer hen.
4,500 gallons - the rain and irrigation water needed to produce a quarter pound of raw beef
17 trillion gallons - the amount of irrigation water used annually to produce feed for U.S. livestock
5 tons - the soil lost annually to erosion on an average acre of cropland
1 pound - the amount of fertilizer needed to produce 3 pounds of cooked beef

The book includes many more statistics, and details the various ways the environment is harmed by industrialized agriculture, mainly commercial beef, poultry, and dairy industries. There are the effects on the environment to consider, as well as the ethical treatment of the animals which are tortured their whole lives. This is not necessarily a plea for vegetarianism, but implies a need for less harmful methods of farming and ethical raising of livestock. I can't even buy milk or cheese anymore unless it comes from small dairies that let their cattle graze naturally.

Even sugar is as much an environmental concern as it is a health issue. Many people will still consume sugar in moderation, to avoid artificial sweeteners or HFCS, which should be ok. However, the production of sugar cane and beet sugar is one of the largest causes of deforestation and soil erosion on the planet. In the Phillippines alone, sugar production has resulted in a loss of a third to a half of the known species of snail and birds in the Philippines.

I recently read on CNN that we will not have seafood to eat in 40 years, due to human impact on the ecosystem. Water pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction.

Does anyone else share these concerns, or am I becoming a worry-wart?

I read his article in the CSPI newsletter. Yes, I'm concerned about the effects of agrifarming and overfishing, but I'm also concerned about the effects of burning fossil fuels, inefficient appliances, using unnecessary electricity, and all the other behaviors that contribute the the general destruction of the planet.

I eat as "green" as I can afford to eat and stay on the eating plan which works for me. I'm on a very tight budget, can't eat glutenous grains, and do best eating a lot of protein. Buying free range organic chicken is waaaaay beyond my budget. I eat a lot of meal, poultry and egg, and I will admit that I buy them in the largest quantities that I can when they are on sale, and 99% of the time they aren't from happy chickens or contented cows. I buy most of my fish from either Sam's Club or Trader Joe's, two ends of the spectrum, but both based on cost.

My trade-off is in other area's of my life. I NEVER make a single purpose trip anywhere in the car unless it's to pick up my son at school or go to work which is only 3 miles. All the light bulbs in my house are the new energy saving flourescent bulbs that sort of look like regular bulbs. If there's no one in a room, the light is off. The heat stays low, and lower at night. We RAKE and compost our leaves (a six week annual chore) instead of using a blower and/or a lawn company. We dig out weeds by hand rather than using a lawn service to spray herbicides much to our neighbors' dismay. There are no Christmas lights burning. I do FULL loads of laundry and line dry most clothes. I recycle everything. We make sure that our house is well sealed, the furnace is working at 100% efficiency and no energy is wasted.

I think everyone has to chose what they can and can't do. It's a little like religion- there are lots of Catholics who use birth control but still consider themselves Catholic, or Jews who do not keep a Kosher kitchen.

I was a vegetarian for a couple of years for many of these reasons back when I was in college, almost 20 years ago now. I still eat a lot less meat than most Americans, but am now once again a committed omnivore.

I still think the environmental impact of food is worth thinking about. But as I get older I find I have enough guilt in my life without reaching for more. I don't know what the right thing is. I don't know whose statistics to trust, because they vary wildly. I do think there is no way to feed the billions of humans that live on this planet with no environmental impact. But I'm also not convinced that organic farming will feed us all.

So what to do? I don't have a good answer. But my grocery list is the same this week as last, and it will almost certainly be the pretty much the same next week. Lazy, complacent, privileged, almost certainly. I'm sure blowing a couple extra tanks of gas a year to do organic shopping is not going to save the planet either.

Anne

I'm getting more conscious about this sort of thing all the time. Partly there seems to be increased media profile, but also it seems to be making more sense to me the more I think about it.

I am vegetarian now, and eat a mix of organic and non organic food. I'm considering signing up for an organic veggie box scheme in the new year as my christmas present to myself. Over the past few months I've barely used my car. I travel to work on public transport, and use trains for longer journeys when I can. Some months I put more miles on my trainers than I do on my car. (Actually, at the moment I'm deliberately having to try to drive more, because my car battery runs down too much if I just leave the car outside the house doing nothing for too long).

I do feel a bit hypocritical sometimes though. I fly a lot, to see my family and for weekends away and races, and I know that logically I could eat nothing but organic veggies and use nothing but public transport for years and still not repair the damage done by those flights. Sometimes it seems like I do the fun things that pay off for me, without making more fundamental changes that will actually make a difference. It's one thing feeling a bit smug and self-righteous when I get to the supermarket checkout, but giving up regular trips to see my family isn't so easy.

There are no easy answers really. But then I might not be perfect, but I'm still doing a lot better than I could be doing.

My problem is not with eating meat and it never has been. My issue is with the practices of commercial farming and what they manage to get away with. I find it atrocious, from the workers who are employed by these companies (the recent raids of the Swift company comes to mind along with the unimagineable conditions they work in) to the huge impact on the communities in which they set up shop (blood lake, anyone?)I wish we could get back to a place where it exists on a small/local scale as it is managed more closely and with more regard to the consumer, which it appears to have very little of now. Until then, low/organic consumption of meat for me. I can't avoid it entirely, but I do what I can.

This is definitely an issue that is dear to my heart. My lifestyle is hardly ideal but we are taking steps every day towards a more sustainable lifestyle. I really want to get us to a point where we are consuming only locally produced food (a good percentage from our own garden).

I agree that we cannot be perfect "catholics" about it - that we need to do what works for us and continue to strive towards bettering ourselves.

You are not a worry wart. I am getting more conscious of issues like this mainly in relation to how our food is raised and how that affects us. Like the bovine growth hormone in the milk. The fact that most places feed them corn like crazy when cows need grass. It is the grains and pesticides and all that that are getting into our meat we buy and making us sick. There is a certain brand of cheese out there that is a better option because they grass feed their cows most of the time and allow them to graze. It makes a difference in the cheese and the butter(real AA) that they produce. They also guaranteed there are no bovine growth hormones in their cheese or rennet and that if they do have to use antibiotics they separate them from the herd etc.

Pasteurization is another story and I am starting to read about the benefits of raw milk products. I am not completely sold on the idea yet.

I am going to be switching to grass fed beef which it seems unless you know a local rancher can only get online. It also has omega 3 in it and CLA.

I am just trying to get back to a simpler way of life and cutting out as much as I can on processed foods and choosing as many whole foods. We do not have a great selection of organic stuff at the store but I am trying to get that when I can. I really do feel it makes a difference and I do feel it is all the chemicals in the food that are making people sick. It is hurting the animals and then hurting us.

Jasmine - I love raw milk. We use it to make cheese at home. But (more importantly) it TASTES better. But raw milk is too expensive to drink all the time so we stick to organic which still contains a lot of the flavor.

I do think about this in my diet choices. I try to eat mostly organic and I avoid processed foods. We try to do buy from local farmers. We're getting a deep freeze soon and hopefully this spring/summer we'll be able to get alot of our staples (tomatoes - WE EAT TONS OF TOMATOES!!, fruits, etc) and freeze them. Our meat i(which also has its own set of rules because of my religon)comes from a local farmer also. I am also avoiding Cocoa(and all products that containt it) because of the slave trade behind it (I think there is one brand of cocoa in Canada that is guaranteed though). Only Fair trade coffee too. Of course I never buy seedless either... Vandina Shiva has written extenisvely on the harm of seedless crop to the farmers in India.

I will add this to my list of books to check out!!

I just bought fair trade coffee & organic locally made tea for my Mom for christmas - I know the coffee in particular is what she prefers - but it is expensive.

I had no idea I googled this and have just read some horrifying articles about the cocoa slave trade. I'm so shocked that this goes on

I like to buy local produce which can cut down on transportation. Beef from a neighbour etc.

Learning these things about factory farming conditions was a big factor in my becoming vegetarian—that and not enjoying the taste of meat much or handling meat—for which I paid years of patience karma hearing my grandmother ask why if I was a vegetarian, wasn't I losing weight. Nowadays I eat fish from time to time.

Sugar - I only buy sugar made from sugar beets. My dad farms them and the plant he hauls them to makes much of the sugar sold locally. If you are in the midwest, look for Pioneer, Big Chief (I don't even know if they sell under this brand name anymore, probably not) or Michigan Sugar.

Meat - Don't buy it, except for fish occasionally. I'll only buy wild caught. I hope that's the right way to go. It all gets very confusing!

Cheese - Oh, I'm bad bad bad about this. I haven't looked for non-evil options. I bet in the deli section they probably have organic cheese made from happy cows that's priced through the nose. Now I'll probably have to buy it.

Eggs/Milk - I can't bear the thought of the 0.5 sq ft. space for the hen, or the hormones/antibiotics they are pumped with and the nasty food they get, so I pay through the nose to buy from happy chickens at the store. Actually I ran across a farm in a town nearby that sells eggs. I think I'll visit them more often. I don't like cow's milk, so I buy soy milk, which due to its hippie nature, can only be found organic anyway.

Produce - I tend to buy organic when it's convenient for me, e.g. when it's on sale. Summer I have a garden. I get strawberries from the local strawberry farm in the spring and pig out on them and make jam, and blueberries from one of the local blueberry farms in summer and pig out on them and freeze them.

Pigging out on seasonal produce is a farm tradition I think. It's ripe and then gone in the blink of an eye, and there is absolutely nothing tastier than peas out of your own garden or strawberries from right nearby or sweet corn from your garden. So you eat nearly "nothing but" and put up what you can while it's ripe. Sweet corn time, we'll go a week eating nothing but 2-3 ears of corn for supper with a big plate of tomates sliced up (tomates are ripe at the same time) which you can salt or pepper or sugar (I like salt) as you like.

Slave trade? Bleh. I didn't know my cocoa was made by slaves. Meh. Well, I only buy it every 5 years or so, so in 4 years give me a holler.