Studying the food system is a huge undertaking and by doing so we all have encountered numerous new vocab words to add to our lexicon. For us, we have had to dive into an whole other science as well: environmentalism. Throughout our posts you may have come across some words you haven't seen before. After reading Diet for a Hot Planet, I became familiar with some common food and environment related terms that I thought you'd find useful.
Greenhouse Effect -- Certain gasses present in Earth's atmosphere, greenhouse gases, absorb energy from the sun as infrared radiation (heat) and warm the Earth's surface and causes climate change. This is a naturally occuring phenomenon, but within the last 100 years the atmosphere has been absorbing these gases exponentially. These massive changes are keeping the environment from its natural ebb and flow and are permanently altering the atmosphere, and further, our climate.
Foodprint -- Coined Jennifer Wilkins at Cornell University, “foodprint” refers to the impact of our food choices on global warming based on our food’s emissions during growing, processing, packaging, and transporting our food.
Ruminents -- Ruminants are mammals distinct in how they digest their food, because they digest in two steps. First, ruminants semi-digest their food – the raw plant material – then they regurgitate it and the “cud,” as it’s called, is chewed again to break it down further. This quality of cattle is also why you may have noticed they all seem to be in a constant state of chewing. The climate change downside to rumination is that this process produces methane in the gut of ruminants, a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. As they digest, ruminants must release this gas through natural actions just like we do (if you know what I mean!) While this rumination is what allows cattle to digest fibrous grasses that we humans can’t convert into digestible form, it also adds to ruminants’ climate change toll.
Global Warming -- Greenhouse gases naturally incur in the environment. These gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are a critical part of our climate’s stability. But today, manmade greenhouse gases are skyrocketing in the atmosphere. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the IPCC notes, concentrations of both gases have increased at a rate that is “very likely to have been unprecedented in more than 10,000 years.” This increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas is leading to higher temperatures that are destabilizing the planet’s climate – what is commonly called global warming. But global warming might more aptly be dubbed “climate chaos” because its effect is not just “warming” but actually more erratic and extreme weather, including more acute droughts and flooding. The IPCC has found that the intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic, for instance, has increased over the past thirty years, related to increases in the temperatures of tropical seas. At the same time, droughts have become longer and more intense and have affected larger areas throughout the tropics and subtropics, therefore leading to a food crisis as well.
We can all do our part to decrease the speed of global warming, not by driving less or turning out our lights when we leave a room (although these practices are fantastic), but by analyzing what we eat on a daily basis and how we can make those small yet significant changes that I mentioned in my earlier post. Every little bit counts and we can all make a difference.
GO GREEN!
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