How our food choices affect climate change

UC Science Today

About a quarter of all the global climate change problems we’re seeing today can be attributed back to our food system and the dietary choices we’re making on a daily basis. "This is greater than all of the cars on the planet; in fact it’s about twice as much global warming pollution as the cars." That’s Benjamin Houlton, director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. He studies the connection between climate and diet. For instance, just switching from a meat-heavy American diet to a Mediterranean diet, which has less meat, more fish and lots of vegetables is not only good for your health, it’s good for the planet’s health, too. "If we all switch to a diet like the Mediterranean diet – that is equivalent to taking somewhere around a billion cars off of the streets in terms of vehicle emissions each year. So, it’s a huge number that has a tremendous amount. In terms of percentages, it could solve up to 15 percent of global warming pollution by 2050. We thing these are really important things to understand; our dietary choice does matter and it’s something we can do every day."