Editor:
The new Canadian food guide highlights the importance of minimizing our intake of meat without highlighting the urgency behind this decision. The guide points out the bad impacts that meat can have on human health. The problem is that our food decisions are not based strictly on health decisions, but are intertwined with cultural and environmental choices. The food guide completely exempts these aspects that go into our decision-making. There is a critical importance in today’s world to consider the negative environmental impacts that can be reduced by a shift in diet choices, specifically shifting our protein sources from meat to plant-based protein.
After studying land-people relations, it has become clear that the livestock industry is a major contributor to global pollution, which poses a real threat to our livelihoods today and for our children’s generation. The western diet that we are used to is resource-intensive and results in large greenhouse gas emissions. Human hunger and environmental damage is a major problem that will be further exacerbated in the future if people do not adopt the food guide recommendations, which the guide should have made more urgent.
The new Canadian food guide has the potential to create dramatic positive changes for human health and the environment if livestock production is reduced and plant-based protein sources are implemented. Canada currently exports an abundance of lentils and beans; this shift would keep more of Canada’s agricultural production within its borders. The new food guide is a missed opportunity to educate Canadians and give them the information they need to make sustainable diet decisions. It is more important than ever to be considering the impacts that our personal diet choices have on our own bodies but also on those who are outside of our borders and those of future generations.
Amber Pomeroy, Roberts Creek
