At least that's what some people have told me since I decided to go vegan on November 1st, 2010, International Vegan Day. You can find out here what a vegan diet has to do with food waste.
When we think of food waste, we primarily think of supermarkets, bakeries and restaurants, but the largest portion is wasted at home and along the value chain.
Not only does up to 50% of the harvest remain in the fields, but this also applies to meat production. For example, on average, more than 20% of all pigs die before they even reach the slaughterhouse.
The animal industry, with its massive agricultural use, has a particularly severe impact on our ecosystem. Over 75% of the world's agricultural land is concentrated exclusively on growing animal feed or used as pasture. Half of global grain production and a staggering 95% of global soy production are used as animal feed. In the case of meat, up to 90% of all protein is lost on its way to our stomachs.
If we ate the food grown for animals directly, we could feed the world's more than 800 million people who suffer from hunger more than 8 times over.
We (in Western countries) have the luxury of being able to choose our own cut of meat. Meat products like brains, tongue, or liver are often left behind, i.e., wasted, before they even make it into the refrigerator.
In Germany alone, 346 million kilograms of meat are thrown away every year – on average, half of an animal is not eaten, in addition to the meat we don't finish.
This is not only ethically questionable, but also catastrophic from an ecological perspective: the production of animal-based foods requires a particularly large amount of resources. For example, 1 kg of beef requires up to 15,500 liters of water, enough for one person to shower daily for a year.
Depending on the study, between 18 and 51% of all greenhouse gases produced worldwide are caused by the global animal industry.
Animal products thus almost always indirectly waste resources compared to a plant-based diet, where we consume the proteins directly.
So, if you want to take a stand against food waste and for the appreciation of food and a smaller ecological footprint, why not try a plant-based diet?
Have you ever tried a vegan diet, or do you consider it nonsense to question your own eating habits?
#plantbased #vegan #tryvegan #foodwaste #foodwaste #savefood #vegetarian #savefood
