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Eat dinner as if the world depended on it.Australia’s relationship with food and the history of our cuisine is quite different to that of most other nations of the world. As a fully developed first world economy we went from a sustainable, small-scale tribal agricultural system prior to white arrival to an industrialized agricultural food system in the space of 200 years. Most other nations developed their local agricultural food systems over the last 10,000 years, experimenting with different crops, agricultural methods and cultural food settings that were suited to the local conditions, environmental parameters and yielded achievable economic and social outcomes for the community and landholders. In Australia we completely bypassed the agrarian age. We imposed a foreign agro-ecological system on a land completely unsuitable and not able to adapt in the time we impacted it.Our act of eating is a very powerful engagement with nature. An act that is impacted by nature; and probably more now than at any time since modern agriculture began; is now impacting nature. When we sit down to dinner do we think about those impacts? We need to eat dinner as if the world depended on it.What I wanted to achieve in this presentation tonight is to “set the table” for subsequent discussions on the future of our food. I wanted to share with you some of my research findings on the quantification of the Green House Gas Emissions attached to eating dinner in Australia in the 21st century. I’ll outline the drivers of these emissions and what behavior changes we can make as individuals.During my studies I collected a few observations which made me think deeply: a rising population with rising incomes; a static if not decreasing resource pool; climate change; a diet that is heavily based on meat and a poor understanding at a consumer level about the environmental effects of the food choices we make. It became clear to me that food and agriculture are significant contributors to GHGE i.e. CO2, CH4, Nitrous oxide among others, and so our food choices have to be a part of the discourse to reduce our GHGE if we are to have a chance of keeping global warming to less than 2oC below pre-industrial levelsIf we could get some measure of the environmental impact of what we actually eat perhaps we can begin the conversation around our “Foodprint” in this country. I preface my talk tonight on the idea of integrating Climate change with a social change; getting lots of people to make a very small change to something they not only choose to do, but have to do every single day. Eat dinner!Prior to white settlement a little over two hundred years ago, Australia’s first people people lived a healthy and contented life largely in ecological balance with the land. The people in the Aboriginal nation had one of the oldest living cuisines, based on a food system older than modern agriculture itself. The food supplies of Aboriginal people depended on locality and season. Where available Aboriginal people hunted large marsupials and emus, while those living along the coastal areas caught dugong, turtles, river and estuarine fish, crabs, oysters, mussels and other shellfish. Women and children would gather native nuts, vegetables and fruits including wild plum, berries, figs, macadamias and bush tomatoes. The First Peoples scarcely disturbed the pre-historic environment in search of nourishment and their food supplies were ensured by not overharvesting, not taking undersized animals and managing their own population growth and moving on when food became scarce. We can of course only speculate but Australia’s first people were healthy and survived well on a traditional diet rich in nutrients and low in energy density.When the first fleet arrived, they brought with them enough food supplies to last two years and they also brought with them a distillation of the thousands of years of slowly gathered experience in securing, preparing and consuming foods in a European social context. The food cultures and expectations of food for the settlers were a snapshot of Britain at that time. On settlement, European style farming was the only solution in the settler’s eyes. Crossing the Blue Mountains in 1813 opened up the vast interior and so began the pastoral industry and in the process bringing massive change on the natural environment and becoming the mainstay of the economy. Meat became widely available, relatively cheap and frequently consumed three times a day. This relative food affluence no doubt helped to improve the health of the young nation too with records of the time showing that children born in this time were 5cm taller than a reference population in England of the time. Since settlement we have become a nation of carnivores with meat still prevalent in the diet today. Australians consume around 90kg of meat a year – that’s 250g a day per person. You can see from Figure 1 on the handout how the consumption of chicken and pork (the other white meat) have increased so dramatically. Overall Australians now consume around 3.1kg of foods and beverages a day and two thirds of us are overweight or obese which you can gauge from the histogram shift in figure 2. On a range of indicators Australians are certainly food-secure, consuming far more than we require. The academic literature has documented the benefits, in terms of GHGE of plant based diets over animal protein based diets; of the relative benefits of eating fish and mono-gastric meats such as pork over the meat of ruminant animals; of eating a Mediterranean diet over an archetypal western diet; of eating less processed and more natural foods; of reducing overconsumption and food waste; and of eating diets based on organically produced foods over conventionally processed foods. All of these food behaviors would result in a reduced level of dietary GHGE. The literature also supports the broad idea that by following healthy eating guidelines, populations can achieve a positive outcome for individual health and positive environmental outcomes with the noted exception of the consumption of fish which at the quantities recommended in dietary guidelines is unsustainable for global fish populations. The literature is silent on any research about the GHGE impacts of actual meals in the national cultural setting. At the end of the day we don’t eat food groups, or meat types; we eat meals that are a product of our cultural history. In my investigations I have considered what Australians actually eat each night and have tried to create a more meaningful connection between the act of eating in a cultural and social setting and GHGEs. I asked myself;How do Australians actually prepare and eat and where do our meals fit in the ecological budget? Why are some recipes and meals more emissions intensive than other meals and what are the drivers of the GHGE in these meals?Can a benchmark value be determined which might reasonably be assumed to represent the GHGE of a dinner meal and can we estimate the collective “foodprint” of Australia.How can this information be useful to the food and agricultural industries and where to from here?So what are Australians sitting down to eat for dinner tonight? In 2009 and 2011, Meat and Livestock Australia commissioned research to provide an in-depth understanding of Australians main meal practices focusing on meals prepared in the home. Nine out of ten Australians still cook at home every night and 90% of the meals we eat are based on beef, chicken, lamb or fish. Different meals may be prepared and served on different nights of the week for example Roast Lamb on Sundays and Stir Fry and Bolognese on weekdays. The 10 most frequently prepared and consumed meals in Australian homes are;Steak and three veg.Roast Chicken and vegetablesSpaghetti BologneseBeef casserole/stewChicken Stir fryPan fried chicken and vegetablesLamb Chops/cutlets and vegetablesPan fried/grilled fish and vegetablesChicken casserole/stewLamb RoastConvenience, taste and health are the main motivating factors for these choices. I would like to see sustainability become a fourth leg.In Australia the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory reports that agricultural emissions, principally methane from ruminant livestock and nitrous oxide from fertilizer, are responsible for around 16% of our GHGE as shown in figure 3 and 4. Food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing represent a further 1%. The best information on the contribution of GHGE from the total food chain is from research in the EU-25 that indicates food accounts for 31% of the GHGE in that jurisdiction. You can see the relative amounts of emissions in Figure 5. Many authors in my reading suggest that is if we are to achieve substantial reduction in GHGE then how we eat has to be a part of that discussion. While 62% of Australians have concerns about the environment there is very little understanding that our food choices are a significant contributor to GHGE. Moreover moving to a sustainable diet will also improve health outcomes for the population. Essentially what is good for us as individuals is also good for the planet. In my research I took those ten most common meals that are served at dinner time and sought out some representative recipes from sources such as Women’s Weekly, .au and SBS. For each of the ten meals, and each of the recipes for those meals I calculated the nutritional profile of each recipe, the cost of each recipe based on the main supermarket pricing and the GHGE of each recipe based on the GHGE data available for the ingredients. While averages are dangerous statistics, I was able to characterize the average dinner serve as having 2,449kJ of energy, costing $5.88 and responsible for 3,739g CO2-e. Imagine a balloon inflated to around 30cm in diameter.While CO2 in the atmosphere is around 400ppm your breath is about 5% CO2; a hundred times more concentrated, but if for a moment you could imagine that all the air you put into the balloon was CO2 how many would you need to match that 3.7kg CO2-e from your dinner tonight? A few back of the envelope calculations I made equates that 3.7kg CO2-e to around 134 of those balloons. That’s just for one serve of dinner.So, what are the drivers of the GHGE in the dinner meals?This work was a relativity exercise in comparing different meals. The work shows that recipes of fish and chicken consumed in a modern Australian cultural context have fewer GHGE than beef and lamb meals. As pork dishes did not feature in the original study from the MLA on which this work is based there is no comparison of that meat as a meal choice. Figure 6 gives a relative picture of the GHGE of those top ten meals. On a per serve basis beef casserole, steak and three vegetable and lamb roast were the most emission intensive, while pan-fried chicken and chicken stir-fry were the least emissions intensive. My work does not attempt to quantify the benefits to the environment or health if Australians were encouraged to switch out from one meal type to another on the basis of lower GHGE. Such a quantification and recommendation may have perverse outcomes. For example ceasing beef production in Australia might achieve a significant reduction in GHGE but would render large parts of the country unused as alternative farming enterprises may not be suitable to those grazing lands due to topography or rainfall. Beef meat also makes a valuable nutritional contribution with its protein and iron content and effectively converts what is for humans an unavailable foodstuff; grass; to an available and nutrient rich source of kilojoules. In addition the beef industry supports thousands of people in employment and their communities. On a global scale, small holders make their income from raising one or two animals so taking the demand for meat away would have perverse outcomes.Recipes are combinations of different amounts of different ingredients that yield a particular dish. While different recipes for the same meal might contain similar key ingredients, there will be differences in the amounts of those key ingredients and differences in the amounts and nature of other less defining ingredients. The quantity of the meat was a driving factor in the GHGE of a particular recipe and therefore a small change in the amount of meat will impact the GHGE of that meal.My work supports those previous literature findings with a moderate correlation between the type of meat and the GHGE of the recipes that I used. This is shown in figure 7 which plots the GHGE of the meat itself against the GHGE of the recipe for the meal. However, when the type of meat is combined with the quantity of that meat in the recipe there is a very, very strong correlation as you can see in Figure 8. This demonstrates that it is not the type of meat alone that should be a consideration in the GHGE of the meal, but also the quantity you choose on a per serve basis. Remember that we consume around 250g per person, per day. The National Heart Foundation just last week reviewed their recommendations for good health and in those they suggest no more than 350g per week. Largely what is good for health is good for the planet. I come back to that point I made earlier that a small change made by many people doing something everyday can have a large impact.An analysis of the food supply and consumption data from national nutrition studies demonstrates that Australians over consume food. This gives an obvious starting point for reducing diet related GHG emissions. This overconsumption represents an opportunity for society to reduce the GHGE from the food system and achieve positive health outcomes. Reducing food overconsumption will help stretch the ability of the world to feed the expanding population. I did not specifically investigate food waste as part of my study but knowing that more than 20% of our food is wasted in home, reducing food waste is also an obvious and efficient strategy for reducing the environmental impact of our food choices. Moderating consumption of high carbon impact foods will be especially beneficial to reducing diet related GHGE. However simply substituting high carbon foods for less carbon intensive foods may give a perverse outcome as the success of the substitution will depend on the amount of food required to match its energy and nutrient content. In summary my results show that reduction of overconsumption, a reduction of food waste, a smaller serve size of the meat component and a change in the nature of the meat from beef and lamb to chicken and fish would together reduce the dietary impact of GHGE. Small changes, by many people! Climate change will arguably become the single biggest issue to face global economies in general and food and agricultural business. With a typical dinner contributing 3.7kg CO2-e, that is equivalent to driving 20km in a family car every night, or inflating 134 imaginary balloons. From this I estimated that each Australians has a daily foodprint of 9.3kg CO2-e . This is below the value reported of 10.9kg CO2-e for a diet that meets the Australian Health Eating guidelines and 14.5kg CO2-e for the typical diet and with more time I could elaborate on that. Notwithstanding this underestimate I then estimated that our collective food print is responsible for around 78.5Mt CO2-e. Add in the amount of food waste and we arrive at a figure of 94.2Mt CO2-e, or around 18% of the total Australian GHGE. Again this is in all likelihood an underestimate.Climate change is really the integrator of all environmental issues and GHGE has become a proxy for the total environmental impact of an activity. This work chose to use GHGE as the indicator for the environmental outcomes of our daily meal choices. However, GHGE are not a full indicator of environmental damage and other indicators may show different and even contradictory results to this work. I acknowledge that focusing on GHGE as the measure of the relative environmental consequences could lead to gross over simplifications. It could be argued that in an Australian agricultural context, where water is often the limiting resource and a direct cost of production, water intensity of the meals may be a more appropriate measure. However water intensity itself is also subject to much conjecture. For example it is estimated that in NSW the amount of water used in beef cattle production ranges from 3.3L to 221 L H20kg-1 live weight at farm gate depending where and how it is grown.So where to from here?There is no single solution or mitigation strategy for climate change. But with the size of the food related GHGE in this study found to represent around 18% of Australia’s total emissions, and up to 30% as reported in other studies, it will be very difficult to realize the goal of limiting the average global temperature rise to 2?C above pre-industrial levels without at least a small change in the meal habits of Australians.I think that as we begin this conversation around our “foodprint” it will be critical not to repeat the mistakes of the nutrition movement. This work has not been about demonizing one ingredient or one industry over another. To do so would be to repeat the demonization of fat that largely led to the replacement of fat by carbohydrate, which has had some perverse, unintended and disastrous community health outcomes. My research argues against the notion that there are good and bad foods as far as the environment is concerned. Rather there are good and poor meal choices around how much to eat, what to eat and how much to waste. Notwithstanding all the data and discussion on this subject the best encapsulation of how to tackle these problems are not words of mine, rather those of Michael Pollan; Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. Choose your next dinner as if the world depended on it.Thank-you for your interest here tonight. ................
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