Question #5

As I pick up a sandwich to bite into it I am usually thinking about how satisfying it will be to enjoy its flavor, not how environmentally friendly the sandwich is. However, being a vegetarian and one who has never eaten meat, the topics of alternative dietary choices and consequential environmental impacts have always occupied a steady presence in my life. When I was younger I never fully analyzed what I was eating and simply listened to what my parents told me. This I feel is no different than most children who accept what their parents feed them, both literally and figuratively speaking. Now that I am older and have had many discussions with people about the diverse choices concerning people's diets I have concluded that my current diet, the same I grew up with, is one that I believe is the best-suited, not just for me but for the environment as well. Talking with people, reading pertinent articles and conducting research have all led me to evaluate what it means to be a vegetarian-- what are the benefits, the drawbacks and most importantly, is it truly a good way to behave in relation to the environment? At times I have pondered if I may be causing eventual harm to my body because I voluntarily choose to omit protein, a major element necessary to the human diet, but then I remember it is something that I believe in doing. Over the past week I have eaten what I normally do, a diet consisting of pasta, veggies, bread, dairy and protein (soy). To isolate one item in particular that had the most environmental impact is very difficult. At the moment I am thinking that, generally speaking, everything I ate needed to be transported which obviously has an environmental impact. However, when delving into the specifics: the eggs I ate came from chickens who were fed a certain type of grain which must be taken into consideration, along with the lettuce, tomato, peppers, onions, broccoli, mushrooms that were most likely sprayed with pesticides. In addition to that, the other dairy products I consumed originated from animals who were produce methane gas. This exercise serves as a great model to illustrate just how inconvenient it is to take into account the environmental impacts of an every-day activity such as eating.