Dimensions of Sustainable Eating: Social Compatibility

Sustainable Eating (Name)
Sustainable eating is beneficial to our health, environment, economy, and the society. Our health is highly dependent on the food we consume. Nowadays we consume food whose history we know little about. We are rarely familiar with the origin, production, processing, transportation, or retail of the food we eat (Koerber and Hohler). The valuable ingredients of the too many animal-based foods that we consume have been destroyed in many cases. It is important to recognize that what we eat has significant impacts on our bodies, the natural environment, people around us, as well as to the economy.
Contents
1 Definitions
2 Dimensions of Sustainable Eating
1 Social Compatibility
2 Economic Compatibility
3 Environmental Compatibility
4 Compatibility with Good Health
3 Practicing Sustainable Eating
5 Minimizing meat consumption
6 Prioritizing plants
7 Shopping locally
8 Wasting less food
9 Selection of new seafood
10 Eating mindfully
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links
Definitions
Koeeber and Hohler define sustainability as a global development that seeks to satisfy the needs of the present generations without risking the ability of future generations to satisfy their needs.
Sustainable eating is defined as “choosing foods that are healthful to our environment and our bodies” (Moores).
Sustainable eating can also be defined as acquiring and consuming enough amounts of safe and nutritious food to stay active and healthy as well as dealing with resources, waste, and emissions responsibly (Davies, Fahy and Rau 160).
Dimensions of sustainability in eating
In their book “Joy of Sustainable Eating,” Koerber and Hohler outline four dimensions of sustainable eating. Three of these dimensions (society, economy, and environment) are adapted from the political model of sustainability from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Conference on Environment and Development. The authors added the fourth one (health) in the context of food consumption.
Social Compatibility
Eating sustainably is beneficial to the society. Over a third of the total grain harvest globally is fed to livestock in order to produce eggs, milk, and meat (Koerber and Hohler). This is not efficient because these plant-based products could be in most parts be consumed by humans. Every 1 kilogram of meat produces requires multiple times the weight in grain (Koerber and Hohler). This means that healthier food, which can be consumed by humans end up being consumed by animals that produce a lower amount of food.
It is important to note that food loss contributes significantly to global food loss. About a third of food production in the world is lost through spoilage or supply chain leakage (Shepon, Eshel, and Noor). With a high demand for animal-based food, which is resource-intensive, food availability is limited. With sustainable eating, the consumption of animal-based food will reduce significantly. In the study by Shepon, Eshel and Noor, it was found that replacing animal-based foods such as dairy, poultry, pork, eggs, and beef with plant-based foods can lead to the production of twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar products per...