sustain abili-dit Words by Karim Hassan
Upon reading March’s Sustainabili-Dit article, I found myself rather disappointed by the displayed lack of understanding of how a plant-based diet and environmentalism are strongly correlated. Although they mention the good of it, they seem to completely disregard that in the second half of the article. I felt conflicted as though they were to say that there is no correct answer. But upon further inspection I found some points that were misleading. So, I will be addressing these points. This is not to say that I disliked the entire article, in fact I agreed with many of their points not related to veganism. However, I would like to set the record straight that veganism is without a doubt the best way to decrease your environmental footprint as far as diets go. Even though veganism primarily stands on the moral stance against the exploitation of animals, for the purpose of this article, only the sustainable and environmental aspects will be discussed. The first issue I had was when they said ‘When [fruit and vegetables] are transported by air, they can contribute more to emissions per kilogram than poultry meat’. This seemed like a valid argument until I found that air travel takes up only 0.16% of total food transport, whereas 58.97% is transported by sea (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). As well as that, transport only makes up for a miniscule number of emissions. Most emissions come from deforestation, machinery, manure, and fertilizers. Needless to say, the animal industry contributes to the vast majority of these areas. 20
The next point I had a problem with was when they mentioned ‘The horrors of mushrooms, avocados and almonds’. I was concerned about this so-called horror, but was relieved to find through research that mushrooms require relatively miniscule amounts of water and farmland to grow. Not to mention they contain a higher protein to emissions ratio than any meat product. In fact, researchers claim that ‘mushrooms could be considered one of the most sustainably produced foods in the United States’ (Jurgensmeyer, et. al, 2021). After intensive research I found nothing about mushrooms or avocados that was concerning enough to mention, especially in comparison to the animal industry. However, I did find that almonds take about ten thousand litres of water per kilogram (Fulton, 2019), which was troubling because that’s almost as much water as one kilogram of lamb requires. Other environmental impacts: Despite my inability to display it, I have gathered information and made an excel spreadsheet depicting CO2 emissions, water usage, farmland, and protein per kilogram of various vegan and non-vegan food items. The results showed that the plant-based options such as tofu, avocados, almonds and especially mushrooms were significantly more efficient in terms of emissions than meats, especially beef (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). The vegan items had an astronomically smaller environmental impact per kilogram of protein than the animal products. That’s not to mention that the plant-based foods have a greater abundance in other nutrients that are not as concentrated in meats. Considering fibres, healthy fats, and other nutrients, the
