This year, in select New York City schools, Foodstream Learn will provide hands-on cooking and gardening programs for K–12 students across all five boroughs. Our in-school and afterschool programs build lifelong skills in nutrition, wellness, and environmental stewardship, while also helping schools implement food waste prevention and share table initiatives that align with the New York City Office of Energy & Sustainability, and Climate Action Day themes of sustainability and waste reduction.
Continuing our examination of the concepts behind sustainability, we turn our attention to ethical consumption. Religious traditions around the world have a long tradition of having determinations or edicts on what is acceptable to eat. Kosher and Halal are examples of codes for the preparation and consumption of food that followers of the respective faiths are expected to follow. Their determination is based on religious doctrine, but it could be argued they are at least partially based on practical ideas that are representative of the time and place of the origin of these religions. For example, restrictions on pork and dairy in the Middle East region before refrigeration are reflective of structural concerns. The animals themselves carried risk of disease and required an environment that had abundant water. The undercooking of pork, or dairy items left in the hot sun of the ancient Near East, posed serious health risks to the people that consumed them. Fast forward to more recent history and people used what they choose to eat as an expression of their political or social belief. During the American abolitionist movement, people against the convention of slavery, refused to buy or consume products like sugar that were produced by enslaved people. Because of their socio-political belief that slavery was immoral, they saw buying products produced by slavery as complicity with the system that enslaved people. Into the 20th century, environmentalists and animal rights activists saw and do see eating meat as something that was bad for the environment or complicit with the mistreatment of animals. With that, what are some of the concepts and concerns around ethical consumption and sustainable diets in our current age?
Environment & Food
As previously mentioned by posts on Foodstream, how food is grown, produced and disturbed affects the environment. This of course varies by place, method and type of food. Commercial meat production is resource intensive and does contribute to global negative environmental outcomes, but it’s not the only cause of environmental concerns and all meat production is not the same. Issues like mono-cropism (producing just one agricultural crop in a given area) or lack of crop diversity also contribute to environmental problems and put the sustainability of the food supply at risk. For example, meat, seafood or dairy produced in an eco-conscious or simply a less resource intensive way can be more sustainable than an agricultural product that requires lots of industrial inputs and water use. Similarly, the modern global supply chain and transportation of food requires resources as well. The concept of “food miles” is about how far the food has to travel from production to ultimate consumption. Food can be produced sustainably in one part of the world, but then shipped thousands of miles to the consumer. If the food needs to be transported on a ship, plane, by rail or on a truck then it takes the burning of fossil fuels to power the transportation.
Food Cost, Politics & Nutrition
The history of the Green Revolution continues to reverberate through academia and the science of food. The use of intensive agriculture undoubtedly led to negative environmental impacts, but it also fed millions of people around the world, particularly in the Global South. For many people, the math was simple: starve or use resource intensive food production methods. The availability and access to food is not the same everywhere in the world. People face environmental barriers, conflicts and unstable governments that limit food security. In developed countries around the world and in the West, many people have access to food and nutritional options that not everyone has. But even in rich countries food is a matter of economics and survival. In the United States, over 45 million people face some level of food insecurity and often face a similar dilemma of choosing between going hungry or acquiring food that is available, irrespective of nutritional value.
This is further reinforced by the profit model of food. People are accustomed to food at the local supermarket, convenience store or fast-food restaurant being relatively inexpensive and requiring little investment in time and preparation. In order to achieve this and remain profitable, companies turn to science to produce food that is good tasting, affordable and profitable. This means that nutrition and sustainable sourcing become secondary concerns.
Ethics & the Value Action Gap
In response to these concerns in food, nutrition, sustainability and ethics, new models in food have emerged. In the environmental context, people have turned to sustainable agricultural practices that have less of an environmental footprint. Regenerative agricultural practices like organic agriculture or agroecology have become encouraged and practiced by producers and consumers alike. Others have turned to science and looked for ways to use modern technology to improve food production techniques. This can be in the form of information technology to analyze efficiency and productivity to ultimately use less inputs, or it can be in making foods that are alternatives to environmentally harmful conventional foods. An example of this is meat alternative products. They also turn to science, but to produce plant based foods that are similar to conventional meat, but potentially less harmful to the environment.
In the social context, people have turned to new models of consumption that promote health and sustainable food production. The Slow Food model created in Italy in the 1980s, has since spread around the world. At the heart of the Slow Food movement is the rejection of the convenience model mentioned earlier. They believe healthy food produced sustainably is worth waiting for, and therefore “slow”.
Cost, convenience and lifestyle are at the crux of ethical consumption. Many people, like the disciples of Slow Food, choose to see food as an expression of their values. Most people, or the median consumer in economic terms, would prefer that food be produced sustainably and be healthier. It’s a value often expressed by people everywhere in the world. But the difference between a value and the action on that value are not the same. Cost is about economic value, but cost is also about individual circumstances and preferences. Convenience and time are factors for everyone and often can lead to consumer decisions over values.
The individual reasons for eating or not eating food is part of the interconnection of food, environment, politics, society and ethics. In our modern technological society it’s easy to think of food in simple nutritional terms or in terms of cost, but food is politics, so choose wisely…
For more information about our sustainability program and our other programs go to Foodstream or email us at support@foodstreamnetwork.com
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