Maria Radlett explores five sustainable food habits you can adopt in the new year to help reduce your environmental footprint while fostering a healthier lifestyle.
As the new year begins, many of us set out to improve our lives with resolutions aimed at health, happiness, and personal growth. While the tradition of making new year’s resolutions is familiar, the challenge often lies in sustaining them beyond January. But what if these resolutions extended beyond ourselves and toward the well-being of our planet? Such a shift could lead to meaningful, long-term change that lasts well beyond the first month of the year.
One of the most impactful ways to achieve this is through resolutions based around our food choices. In this article, various sustainable food habits are explored, ranging from adopting a plant-based diet to minimising food waste. These practical and eco-friendly resolutions can help to ensure 2025 is a year of lasting, positive change for both you and the planet!
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Sustainable food habits encompass the practices of producing, consuming, and disposing of food in ways that minimise environmental harm while promoting good nutrition and food security. Our current food system is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and a driver of complex social issues, including inequality and resource depletion. A failing food system perpetuates a harmful cycle that impacts both people and the planet. To break this cycle, we must address the root causes. Below are five small but transformative changes you can make to promote a sustainable food system!
1) Supporting local
‘Food miles’ is gradually becoming a more widely recognised term that refers to the distance the food we consume has had to travel to get to us. Generally, the longer the distance of travel, the more detrimental to the environment due to more vehicle emissions.
However, there are some blurred lines we should be wary of. For instance, in international trade, the emissions released from a long shipping route journey may sometimes be less than a journey of shorter distance, based on fuel usage. Nevertheless, more often than not, food that travels a short distance has lower emissions than a long distance journey.
Making a conscious effort to support producers in your home area not only reduces food miles, but supports the local economy, farmers and job production. Additionally, food bought from local farms instead of supermarkets is likely to contain less preservatives!
Examples of fresh vegetables available at most farmer’s markets.
Photo credit: JaHo on Pixabay.
Understandably, there is concern around the higher price of local foods compared to crops grown elsewhere on high-intensity farms. Though this may be true in many cases, it is important to remember that smaller farms encourage greater biodiversity while large scale farms often practice monoculture, which depletes soil nutrients and shrinks biodiversity.
Here are some examples of how to support local:
- Shop at farmers markets/local produce fairs
- Grow your own herbs, fruits and vegetables in a garden/windowsill
- Find local food outlets
- Buy directly from a farm
- Check with local food businesses to ask where they source their produce
- Avoid major chain supermarkets
2) Seasonality
An often completely overlooked way to buy food sustainably is to align your fresh produce purchasing with the seasons. In the UK, we have a constant stream of fruit and vegetables all year round, with just a tiny label to inform us of their origin.
Linking back to food miles, if you have to buy from supermarkets, make an effort to only buy the fruit and veg that has been produced in the UK, and that is harvested close to the time of purchase. Buying blueberries from Peru in December isn’t particularly emissions-conscious! The National Trust and the BDA provide further information on which fruits and vegetables are best to buy in each month.
3) Check labels
Labels on foods can be a great way of deciphering whether produce has been grown ethically and organically. The Red Tractor symbol is one we are perhaps most familiar with, which means British food has been responsibly produced. The Fairtrade certification is also well known, particularly when discussing bananas and coffee.
This label ensures the minimum level of social, economic and environmental standards are met during production. Looking for organic labels on produce is also a great way to promote farming without pesticides and other chemicals that can be detrimental to ecosystem health.
While a small added price does come with buying ethical labels, this ensures fair pay for those involved in these practices. If you can afford to swap a few of your usual purchases for those with responsible origin, it is a huge step in the right direction!
The Fairtrade certification to look out for.
Photo credit: Bjerkebanen on Wikimedia Commons.
4) Alternative diets
Many people attempt “Veganuary” every year, which is when an individual eats a vegan diet for the month of January, often with the aim to continue this throughout the year. While this is great if you have good self discipline, going full throttle on a dietary change instantly might not be the most effective way of implementing a sustainable diet. A sudden large shift in diet may become overwhelming!
Almond milk being poured over a bowl of oats.
Photo credit: CookYourLife on Pixabay.
Instead, try to implement subtle changes, for example, switching out dairy milk for a plant based alternative. There are so many tasty options on offer, and they all have reduced negative implications on the environment.
Moreover, studies have shown we eat a lot more meat than is necessary. “Meat Free Mondays” is an initiative encouraging people to not eat meat on this day. Switching your meat dishes for vegetarian alternatives even once a week can cut your household carbon footprint a significant amount.
With a surge in vegetarianism and veganism, there is plenty of information out there regarding the best plant based recipes - see some of the recipes from Wild Magazine! A complete dietary shift is not necessary, but implementing better variety can combat biodiversity loss and emissions release from high intensity meat production. Vegan and vegetarian diets also protect against obesity, coronary heart disease, some cancers, diabetes and hypertension.
5) Low wastage
One third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions comes from food waste, so it is important to implement good food waste management into your new sustainable food habits for the new year.
You can reduce food waste through meal planning, storing food properly to prevent spoiling, freezing leftovers, composting biodegradable scraps, pickling certain foods, and serving smaller portions. Furthermore, some supermarkets and shops offer a “wonky food” scheme where the less ‘attractive’ vegetables are on sale for a cheaper price. It is the perfect win-win situation when considering the cost of living crisis.
Photo credit: TheDigitalArtist on Pixabay.
To conclude, whether you choose to become a regular at the farmer’s market, become an ethical food label extraordinaire, or commit to trying an alternative diet, every small change adds up towards a more sustainable food system. While food habits can be tough to break, with a little persistence, there can be change!
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