As food enthusiasts, it is not unusual to spend hours in the food aisle in supermarkets, pondering exciting new recipes and our favourite dishes. Although our choices are often guided by convenience and price, we do not always consider food sustainability while shopping for our favourite recipes. However, with the looming threats of climate change and population explosion, being aware of sustainability in food development can help us make more informed decisions and encourage us to adopt healthy eating habits in the long run.

Even as sustainability in food development has been popularised across the world, it faces several challenges on its way.

Some of the notable challenges in this regard have been finding sustainable food products to buy, reducing the consumption of meat and dairy, minimising the wastage of food, reducing the use of plastic in food development, and getting more friends and family members on board to pursue sustainability and healthy eating habits. However, none of the challenges has been as daunting as that of eating sustainably on budget.

Although most sustainable green meals are affordable at all income levels, on average, sustainable eating and food development are considered to be more expensive. But with these easy tips, you can easily get started with sustainable food recipe development without having to pinch your pocket hard.

NOTE: My intention in writing this is to encourage you to act sustainably toward you’re eating habits which are affordable at all income brackets.

Let me tell you how…

Sustainable food choices

Adopting sustainability to food development and healthy eating starts with rethinking your food choices. Meat, fish and dairy are not just expensive, but the animal agriculture industry is also responsible for one of the largest carbon footprints across the globe. Although it does not insinuate considering a vegan diet, cutting down on meat, fish and dairy can help you practice sustainable food development within a budget.

The climate impact of diets is usually compared in terms of greenhouse gases that are emitted today. But this misses a hidden cost: the carbon opportunity costs of agricultural land. If we were not using this land to grow food, it would be possible that forests and wild grasslands grow on these lands. They would not only harbour wildlife, but also store much more carbon. Meat and dairy products need more land than alternatives, and therefore have a higher opportunity cost.

Going vegan would result in the largest carbon savings, but even just a reduction of meat and dairy consumption – without eliminating it completely – can also have a massive impact. In fact, a diet that replaces beef with chicken and cuts out dairy would achieve almost as much as a fully vegan diet.

In addition to reducing your consumption of meat and dairy, you can also opt for more seasonal fruits and vegetables in your diet. Seasonal fruits are not artificially ripened, making them a healthy food choice. Choosing foods that are produced locally can help you adopt sustainability while helping boost the local economy. Community gardening and vegetable gardens are also promising opportunities that allow you to grow your own vegetables and can also help you save money.

In the standard framework of counting greenhouse gas emissions, opportunity costs are not considered. The ‘carbon footprint’ figures usually reported for different foods are based on greenhouse gas emissions today: how much nitrous oxide is produced when we add fertilizers; methane released by cows; carbon released when we cut down forest and replace it with crops. Land use is not included unless it changed in the last year. 

The opportunity costs of land are the possible alternative uses for this land. If we weren’t using it to grow crops or raise livestock, it could be restored to forest or wild grasslands. Restoring these could take at least some of the 1400 billion tonnes of CO2 back out of the atmosphere and put it back into vegetation.

Storing this carbon in vegetation and soils is the opposite of emissions. It’s negative emissions. Since we need to urgently reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, minimising the amount of land the world needs to feed itself is a possible solution. Of course, CO2 in the atmosphere is not the only metric we care about: there is a complex range of socioeconomic factors (such as the livelihoods of people who work in the farming sector) to consider. What we’re doing here is presenting the scientific understanding of what happens to one of those elements – carbon – across a range of possible futures. It’s up to society to decide what it should do, given the choices available.

 Reduce wastage of food

Wastage of food is one of the most potent threats to sustainable food development. Almost 17% of the total food produced is estimated to go to waste at the household and retail level, adding to the global food crisis. And at a time when almost 828 million people around the globe suffer from hunger and food insecurity, reducing the wastage of food is one of the most humane and obvious ways to lower your costs and carbon footprint.

Plan ahead and cook your own food.

Cooking is not just an amazing opportunity to be more sensitive and intimate with what you eat, but it is also a cost-efficient way of reducing your carbon footprint. While cooking is a great way of adopting sustainable food recipes, it also encourages you to be more conservative about the use of energy. In addition to cooking, planning also allows you to add variety to your healthy eating habits, and avoid the wastage of food.

As an Orosensation specialist and active advocate of healthy eating, sustainability in food development has encouraged me to explore the vibrant, diverse dimension of food.

Choosing to go sustainable in my eating habits has allowed me to take a step towards cost efficiency and a healthier, greener future.

Let’s come together and join hands for a better and food-secure future for our coming generations.

Cheers,

Ashiwani