What if I told you there was a single word that could encapsulate the entire production method of a product?

This word was so descriptive and ironclad in its definition that a product, once graced with its letters, would immediately be elevated to a more optimal choice.

What’s better — this term could be applied to products that were made not only in your community or region, but all over the country and even the world, by big companies and tiny mom & pop shops, mass produced and artisanally created.

Essentially, this term would tell you that a product made by your local shop AND by a Fortune 500 company were equally valuable and worthy of your purchase.

Think that’s possible?

Probably not.

Why? Because the manner in which a product is produced matters. And it’s incredibly complex.

How a Fortune 500 company — let’s say Target — makes a shirt, will be vastly different than a shirt you might find at your local farmers market. The former might use methods and labor that you would find appalling. The latter likely crafted their product themselves with care.

Now I am not saying either product is better than the other, I am simply trying to point out that in both cases the shirt-maker has the right to use a particular term that is quite popular these days: organic.

If Target used organic cotton, they get to use that label, even if they used cheap foreign labor to produce it. Likewise, your local shirtmaker can use the term organic too if they used an organically grown textile to make the shirt.

Two wildly different processes, same exact term.

Does organic sufficiently describe the value of the good, then, in this case?

The same holds true for food.

Organic food sales are booming across the country. And while there may certainly be some merits to some of the practices used by these farms, it is equally true that not every organic farm uses every best practice or sustainable method.

Some organic farms are simply behemoths — giant corporate run industrial farms that can use the term organic because they fit the label.

But those giant farms resemble a conventional farm more than they do the image you have in your head when you think “organic.” They’re typically not your small, local, diversified farm run by a nice family with a dog.

They are monocultures.

Organic is just a word, and it tells you very little about the type of system in which your food was grown.

Local

Ok so maybe local food is the answer.

The benefit of local food is that it is produced in your community, typically speaking. The actual definition of local food can vary depending on who you ask.

Here in D.C. we have a “local” grocery store that attempts to only carry locally grown or produced products. They define local as anything grown or produced in the states of the Chesapeake watershed.

In practice this means something grown as far away as Massena, NY (529 miles from D.C.) can be sold at their store as a “local” product. Half a thousand miles doesn’t feel too local…

Now I’m not at all knocking their definition of local food — I am simply pointing out that this term, like “organic,” is a bit loosely defined. Local does not necessarily mean the farm 30 miles down the road that you can visit on the weekend. It may be much further away than you think.

Similarly to the word “organic,” something labeled as “local” doesn’t actually tell you anything about the production methods. The only thing it tells you (and this is even debatable) is that the product likely didn’t travel as far to get to you, compared to other products in the store.

That’s it.

It doesn’t tell you anything about how the food was produced. In a post from several years ago I joked about the fact that if you happened to live in a town with a Coca Cola bottling plant that you could sit back and enjoy a “local Coke.”

Including where ingredients were assembled in the definition of “local food” is a bit dubious. At best, the benefit is keeping money in the local economy. “At least Martha down the street is getting my chocolate chip cookie money instead of Nabisco!”

Is that a benefit? Absolutely. But was the cacao in the chocolate chips grown locally? Unless you live in the tropics, probably not. So assembling products from around the planet down the block is hardly a local food, in my opinion.

The point of all of this is not to disparage “organic” and “local” food. It is more to point out that both of these terms probably mean a bit less than you realize.

I think the hope is that each of these words are synonymous with “sustainable.” But when corporate mega-farms can technically use both of these words without issue, I think we’ve elevated them a bit more than they deserve.

What should we eat, then?

It’s at least partially due to these issues that I’ve firmly planted my flag in the vegan and plant-based movement. If we want to work toward a more sustainable food system we have to take the 30,000 foot view.

Sure organic and local food have their place and their benefits. But the far bigger line must be drawn between plant foods and animal foods.

It is simply a law of thermodynamics that growing plant foods for human consumption will ALWAYS be more efficient than raising animals for food.

We can either go

Plants -> Humans, or

Plants -> Animals -> Humans.

When we insert animals into the middle of our food chains we lose A TON of energy in the process. That is inefficiency. That is the reason animal agriculture currently uses more than 50% of ALL land in the contiguous United States. That is the reason you can feed a vegan for a year on just 1/16th of an acre of land while a meat-eater needs 18 times as much land. That is the reason the carbon footprint of a vegan is half that of an omnivore. And that is the reason for 91% of Amazon deforestation — clearing land to feed animals and then us, instead of us directly.

Organic and Local may have their place in a sustainable food system. I am not here to say they are worthless terms. But make no mistake about it — if you want to make a real, measurable impact on the planet and create a new sustainable food system for the future, EAT MORE PLANTS (and less meat).

That’s where the clearest line must be drawn.

Friday is Earth Day.

I say it every single year.

I say it every single year because it is that important, that staggering, and sadly still that unknown.

Going vegan is by far the most important choice you can make to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and improve the health of the planet.

Animal agriculture accounts for anywhere between 18-51% of total greenhouse gas emissions — ALL transportation combined accounts for 13%.

So you could NEVER take another plane, train, bus, boat, or taxi again in your life.

Or you could just eat plants for the rest of your life.

One is completely unfathomable. The other is a nice way to live. It’s healthier. It doesn’t harm animals. And the impact of the going vegan would be far greater anyway.

If you still need convincing on the environmental benefits of a vegan diet, watch the documentary Cowspiracy. It’s streaming on Netflix right now. It’s amazing. When you’re done, sign up for their Thunderclap campaign to promote the message to your social network online.

So drive less, use less water, buy solar panels, plant a garden. All great things to do for the environment this year. Just know that what’s on your plate is and will always be the most important choice you make for the environment. So choose plants.

Happy Earth Week!

It is often said that giving up the use of animal products for food and otherwise has three major benefits — for the animals, for the environment, and for your health.

To many, however, this may feel a bit abstract.

We can theorize a benefit for the animals, that is relatively obvious, but we still may not feel it’s necessity. We may be able to grasp some benefit for the environment, though we are already getting more abstract. And the health detriments of animal-based foods is nearly completely obscured from the mainstream dialogue (SEE: Paleo Diet Fad).

Therefore, allow me to issue a challenge, a challenge that will not only make these issues much clearer for you, but may just inspire you to ditch the animal products entirely as well and go vegan!!

I am calling this challenge “The Vegan Maker.”

All I need is 4 hours and 41 minutes of your time and in that time I believe I can turn you into a vegan. Don’t believe me? Perfect! You are an ideal candidate for this challenge!

In this allotted time all I am going to ask you to do is watch movies. Three movies in particular. Sounds like a pretty simple challenge doesn’t it? A few other quick rules and then I will reveal the movies and the order in which to watch them.

Rules:

1. Everything is more fun with a friend, so enlist a buddy

2. Eat your meal beforehand, not during..

That’s it! Just two rules.

Final note: If you are brave you can choose to watch these documentaries back to back to back. Or alternatively, watch one per night for three nights. It’s up to you.

Ok drumroll please. Here are the three movies I want you to watch, in order:

The Vegan Maker:

1. Earthlings (1:35) (Free on YouTube, or for HD visit their website)

2. Cowspiracy (1:30) (Starting TODAY this amazing documentary is streaming on Netflix!)

3. Forks Over Knives (1:36) (Streaming FREE on Netflix!)

If you have YouTube and Netflix this is a totally free date night!

So, are you up to it?!

Let me know in the comments, and be sure to report back once you have finished! Regardless of the outcome I assure you, you will never look at food the same.

This might sound like a pretty easy question to answer, but think about it for a second. When you sit down to dinner, how many people are at your table with you?

Now the obvious way to answer this question is to just look around the next time you dine and count. For most of us the answer would be anywhere from zero to probably four or five dining partners. While answering this question in this way will help you with your meal planning, it’s not the answer I am looking for.

See, when I sit down to dinner there are 7,365,486,000 people at my table (and counting!).

That’s the current world’s population as of writing this post. (You can check how much it’s gone up since I wrote this post here).

That’s a pretty big table, and let me tell you, conversation gets pretty loud, and confusing with so many languages. But we’re all here eating from the same table.

What’s On The Menu

Picking what to serve can be a bit of a conundrum, because we all eat very differently, and some more sustainably than others.

It’s not like picking a menu for your family, where you only have to worry about the taste preferences of a few, and the market availability of the ingredients in your particular area.

When you have 7,365,486,000 dinner guests you have to worry about the availability of the ingredients worldwide! Will there be enough for everyone?

When you sit down to eat, are you worrying about how to feed yourself and your family, or are you worrying about how to feed all of humanity?

While I admittedly am not thinking about that at every single meal I partake in, it is a topic that does inform my dietary choices. And when I consider the question one thing stands out above all the rest: not everyone at my table can eat like I can.

Not every single one of the 7,365,485,999 people at my table can have a Big Mac, an order of fries and a large Coke. Not all of them can have ice cream for dessert. Many of them will miss out on the potato chips and beef jerky we have for in between meal snacks.

A Sustainable Menu

If I choose a meat and dairy heavy meal, a lot of the people at my table will go hungry. See the chef can’t prepare 7,365,486,000 servings of meat and dairy based entrees.

When I plan a meal for 7,365,486,000 people, a lot goes out the window. It can’t be meat at every meal or even most meals — there’s just not enough for all of us to have it at every meal. It can’t be processed junk foods (the distribution channels alone are unsustainable, let alone all the petroleum-based packaging, food additives, fats and sugars and salts, etc).

For the most part I need to serve pretty basic meals comprised of whole plant foods.

And wouldn’t you know, that’s how most of my guests are used to eating! Billions of my compatriots from China, India, Central and South America, and Africa are used to eating meals comprised of mostly plants!

They love things like starchy rice, beans, vegetables, potatoes and sweet potatoes, corn, lentils, wheat, oats, and fruits. Most of the world already eats this way for one simple reason: it is cheaper.

It is wayyyy cheaper to live on beans and rice than it is to live on brats and ricotta. Bulgar is cheaper than burgers. Chickpeas are budget-friendly while chicken and cheese break the bank for many.

Why is this?

Why is it cheaper to buy whole plant foods than it is to buy animal products?

Because price is a reflection of how much it cost to produce an item. And the cost to produce an item relates to how much energy it took. So when we consider the fact that beefsteak tomatoes are cheaper than ground beef, we realize that it’s because tomatoes are more sustainable than cattle meat!

We in the Western world have the privilege of not worrying too much about where our next meal is coming from. And with that privilege we have a responsibility to consider not just how we are going to feed ourselves, but how we will feed the world.

We need a more sustainable food system (animal agriculture accounts for a whopping 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide!), and that can only happen when we switch to a more plant-based diet.

Consider your 7,365,486,000 table mates the next time you sit down to eat and ask yourself if your entree choice will really be able to be fed to each and every one of them, or if some of them will go hungry.

In what is possibly the most compelling argument that human beings are plant-eaters, the people in the five Blue Zones of the globe all eat a diet that is mostly plants.

Let’s back up. First, what are Blue Zones?

The Blue Zones are regions of anomalous longevity. In other words, they are demographically significant regions of Planet Earth where the human beings live longer than anywhere else. In fact, people in these regions are ten times more likely to live to 100 than people in the United States!

And not only do these people live the longest lives of anyone on Earth, they also live the most disease-free years, and the vast majority die suddenly of old-age! Sounds good to me!

After years of studying birth and death records, Dan Buettner and his team at National Geographic settled on five distinct regions with scientifically verified longevity. There were many regions considered, but due to incomplete birth and death records many could not be verified.

The five regions are: Loma Linda, California, USA; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; and Okinawa, Japan.

Five very different regions geographically with one thing in common — the humans here live the longest of anywhere on Earth.

What Do They Eat?

Perhaps most surprising is that the people in each of these very culturally different regions eat a diet that is very similar in one key way: 95-98% of their daily calories come from whole plants! In Okinawa, nearly 60% of their calories come from sweet potatoes alone!

This of course means that in none of the regions are the people completely vegan, and that’s OK! I’d suspect if they were 100% vegan they might see just the slightest uptick in their life expectancy. But that’s not the point — the point is they eat way more plants than we do!

Either way this should be good news! You don’t have to entirely give up meat and animal products to experience outstanding longevity! You do, however, have to commit to the vast majority of your calories coming from whole plant foods. If you ate a 2,000 calorie diet this means just 100 daily calories from animal sources. That’s not a lot!

When the average American consumes just 5% of their calories from whole plant foods, this can be equally as daunting as the prospect of a fully vegan plant-based diet! (SOURCE)

Factors Beyond Diet

Now to be sure, there are other factors beyond just diet that produce longevity. In fact, there are nine! And while you’ll have to buy Buettner’s latest book to find out all nine (and how to implement them in your life), I can tell you that two additional key elements are physical activity and social relationships. Check out The Blue Zones Solution for more.

In each of the five Blue Zones, physical activity is a big component of their lifestyle. In the United States and many other developed nations, we have literally engineered the activity out of our day — the elevator instead of the stairs; the remote control for the tv; the desk-based occupations, etc. Yet in the Blue Zones, communities are incredibly walkable and occupations are active. People don’t really exercise deliberately — they just move more.

Could it be that diet has nothing to do with it and it’s just a matter of physical activity? I suppose it’s possible, though by that logic you’d figure there would be very active communities who eat meat-heavy diets making the cut, and that just isn’t so!

Diet Matters.

The second major component is social relationships. Many of the people in the Blue Zones maintain the same friendships for all 90 to 100+ years of their lives! That’s pretty incredible! In our modern world of isolated work, social media, and television, it is safe to say that we do not emphasize social relationships as much as we used to and probably should!

There are several other factors that go into the makings of a Blue Zone, and to be sure diet isn’t the only component. However it appears to be the undeniable cornerstone of their longevity. And as I started out saying, in what is possibly the most compelling evidence we have that we are meant to eat mostly (or all!) plants, each of the longest living communities on Planet Earth eat at least 1,900 of their 2,000 daily calories from whole plant foods!!!

Human beings are plant eaters, and when we emphasize these foods we are designed to eat, we are rewarded with disease-free longevity. Go Plant-Based Today!