Opening Up About the Complex Relationship Between Food and Sustainability

In a world of over 7 billion people, food is a major component of sustainability. Food is perhaps one of the most complex facets of sustainability due to the cultural ties humans have with food. This is why I have admittedly avoided this topic thus far. Whether you have food or you don’t, all life centers around it. I can only speak on my behalf, a middle class white American that has never truly wondered where my next meal is coming from. Because food is such a personal issue, many discussions regarding food and its impact on sustainability can quickly become heated, so it’s important to practice acceptance of others and their opinions even if you don’t agree.

This blog is going to contain little to know supportive research as I will not be delving right away into fact based discussions, but rather opening up this category in a more qualitative way and my own relationship with food.

Personally, I know that my food consumption is one of the weakest aspects of my sustainability. I eat animal products in every meal, which I realize is very privileged and not inherently sustainable. This is how I grew up and I’ve carried the practice into adulthood. Another practice revolving around food I carried from childhood into adulthood is my struggle with body image.

Weight and size were of constant focus growing up, whether it was from comments and pinches by my parents about my tubby areas or looking at the popular girls who all had the same body type. Growing up you don’t realize the impact that only seeing one type of beauty has on you. I was an athlete in high school and always physically and mentally healthy, but there was that voice in the back of my head saying I wasn’t as beautiful or skinny enough.

Moving into early adulthood and the emergence of social media occurring simultaneously, there were images with tall, thin, beautiful women with phrases like “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” that myself and many other young women like me used as motivation to change our bodies. Fortunately, I never truly developed an eating disorder, though I would say I never had a truly healthy relationship with my body. Not until recently has body positivity and body neutrality had a social presence, with the emphasis on how you feel instead of how you look. This has hugely helped myself and other women embrace their authentic selves.

Okay, what’s my point with all of this? Long story short, especially in those with true eating disorders and/or those recovering from EDs, food rules or any sort of food restriction can trigger disordered eating behaviours. Therefore, because of the intimate relationship between societal expectations, food, and body image, a restrictive diet of veganism would be triggering for many. In addition, while eating a plant based diet has been shown to reduce one’s ecological footprint, we don’t have the right to tell somehow how they should fuel their body, or shame them for what they eat.

What we CAN do is demand better practices and treatment of animals from dairy and meat farms through regulation and where we choose to purchase from. We CAN demand more vegan and vegetarian options from restaurants by voting with our dollar to normalize meatless meals and provide more diversity in the market. We CAN acknowledge the impact our food choices have on the environment and find other ways to reduce our impact.

That’s exactly what this blog is all about, because there’s no one trick fix to reach sustainability, there’s no one right path. Our approach to sustainability will be dictated by our individual lifestyles, some things we will share like swapping plastic straws for reusable ones, while some things will differ like taking public transit to work versus commuting. All we can do is be better today than we were yesterday, whether that’s eating one meatless meal, walking to the corner store instead of driving, or turning the heat down to 63 instead of 68.

We know that our small negative practices when multiplied by millions can result in extreme pollution and harm, but in that same way the small little good things when multiplied can hugely reduce our impact.