Eye Operners: CSPI

I started off with this eye opener by taking a Tour the Food Supply on Center for Science in Public Health website. That was quite an interesting tour. One of the most interesting facts I came upon was that 22 billing pounds of fertilizer would be capable of providing energy to 1 million Americans for a full year! I hope that sometime soon we find an environmental safe way of converting that fertilizer into energy. Something that really disgusted me was the amount of pesticides farmers are using on there crops. And some people wonder why there are consumer buying these foods and getting sick from them. Same thing with outbreaks of food borne illnesses. It is very unlikely that the slaughter house are keep clean but yet those houses are allowed to sell there product to supermarkets. A lot of interesting facts that seem to be ignored by a majority of people.

The Eating Green Calculator is a system that lets you see how your diet is compared to its affects on the environments health. I found out that the environmental burden from the animals I eat a year si 1.0 acres of grains and grass, 36.3 pounds of fertilizer, .3 pounds of pesticides, and 6323 pounds of manure produced from those animals. From my point of view I think its bad that what I eat affects the enviornment by the much. That makes me think about what impact larger people with higher food intake affect our environment. I think it would be possible for me to improve my diet. It would be harder for me during the summer times but during the winter I think it would be much easier.

I then scored my diet by taking Score Your Diet on the same website. This gave me an insight into how the food I eat is affecting the environment and animal welfare. I felt that this was not a very accurate test to take because the selection of servings it gives you in the drop down menus do not fully fit my serving amounts I usually eat. But of course I don't exactly write down my serving sizes so I had to estimate anyway. After entering my serving sizes I found that I scored the highest was in beef, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. I ties with fruits (3) and veggies (3), with whole grains (2) coming in third and beef (0) in fourth. I had all zeros for beef because I very rarely eat beef during the winter. Now if I were to take this during the summer time when I can start up the grill my beef consumption would be much higher. As for my lowest scores, these came in cheese (-17) and milk (-6) consumption. I have to think of ways to change my impact on the environment side of food because I scored the lowest in that category. I could change that number by eating more fat-free product. Overall I had an Uh-oh score of -18...which isn't a good number to be sitting at. It says I need help so I have to try and change my diet in way that will benefit our environment and animal welfare.

All of this means to me that my diet can have a great impact on the environment. I never really thought how what I eat can impact the environment until I did this eye opener. It will make me think of ways to improve my dieting so that I can feel better about my tracks that I leave on our environment. This eye opener definitely opened up my eyes in a new way to help out the environment.