Can an App Fix Our Food System?

No, But I still want it.

Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash

Over the past two weeks, I have picked on beef as one of the main causes of greenhouse gas emissions. It is, and we as a planet need to eat less of it to get our environmental problems under control. The below recent graphic from the Economist shows the health benefits of cutting down on beef (you live longer on average) and the oversized greenhouse gas impact meat and dairy have on the average American diet. To be fair, not all the meat in that second graphic is beef, but beef has the greatest impact. To be even fairer, the average American diet is not the average global diet. The average American diet is one of the highest in beef, so let that diet stand in for one of the highest beef-based diets in the world.

But beef isn’t the only problem. This second graphic reminds us that the emissions from one source aren’t always the same. A chocolate bar may have a higher emissions footprint than a steak. Cheese may have higher emissions than pork.

Finally in this graphics-palooza, let’s look at what makes up the GHG emissions of many of the proteins we eat. Most, but not all those emissions come from the production of that protein. We also need to think about and address the GHG emissions of how our food is processed, transported, traded, prepared, and disposed of.

Fix our food system? There’s an app for that.

A recent study of the dining habits of Australians found that replacing some family dinner items with more environmentally friendly options could cut GHG emissions by about 25%.

The scientists who conducted the study recommended on-pack labeling of greenhouse gas emissions for every packaged food product so that shoppers make informed choices.

The study projected emissions of annual grocery purchases from 7,000 Australian households. The study found that meat products contributed almost half (49 percent) of all greenhouse gas emissions, but made up just 11 percent of total purchases.

This researchers behind the study developed a free app called ecoSwitch, currently available in Australia, which is based on this research. I checked, and it isn’t available in the United States where I live.

The app allows shoppers to scan a product barcode and check its ‘Planetary Health Rating’, a measure of its emissions shown as a score between half a star - high emissions - to five stars, low emissions.

The George Institute, the group behind the app, plans to include integrate land and water use, and biodiversity, and to introduce the tool to other countries in the near future.

What you can do.

We need to address our food system from top to bottom to make it better serve our health and our environment. But this involves more than just how much beef we eat, and how often we substitute microproteins for higher emitting proteins like beef or chicken.

Here are some things you can do:

-       Eat less beef and dairy – This is the lowest-hanging fruit. Beef and dairy have the highest GHG and environmental footprint, so using less of them can help the most.

-       Compost. Food waste is a huge source of methane. If you compost your food waste, you avoid this and have a great fertilizer for your garden.

-       Start that garden. This can make a small dent in your dependency on our food system, but few of us are going to become self-sufficient in food production. The main reason to start a garden is so that we understand better where our food comes from and appreciate how it got there.

-       Recycle. Recycling isn’t the answer in and of itself, but we should do it where we can, and maybe stop producing plastics that can’t be recycled.

-       Eat seasonally/Eat locally. Your food has a transportation footprint. To avoid this try to eat what is in season and what is local. That means don’t buy that fruit that comes from halfway across the world and don’t eat that meat that comes from halfway around the world.

This takes a change in culture and a policy change.

These “things you can do” partially come down to culture and partially come down to policy. We can choose not to buy those grapes from halfway around the world, but policy can make it so they aren’t allowed.

We can largely leave composting and recycling up to the individual or do what Sweden does and mandate it through policy. About 60% of the world’s waste ends up in landfills. In Sweden, that number is about 1%.

As people continue to make the connection between our food system and the environmental degradation it causes, people will demand that policy addresses it.

In the future – hopefully not too distantly in the future – we will make our politicians fix our food system.

An app can’t do that.

It takes people making decisions - potentially politically unpopular decisions - to make our food system serve us and the planet above profit.

Yes, give me the app that gives me better information about the foods I eat. But I would rather have brave policymakers.

Will I have to settle for the app?