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The Green File / La filière verte > Comment "Peanut Butter & Jam for Earth Day"

Peanut Butter & Jam for Earth Day
by Ross Nichol, April 22, 2010
Looking for small ways to make a big difference for the environment? Why not start by making yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
As members of the PB&J Campaign (no, I’m not kidding) like to say, “You don’t have to change your whole diet to change the world. Just start with lunch.”

Eating a plant-based lunch (such as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bean burrito, vegetarian chili, or a hearty salad) instead of an animal-based lunch (such as a hamburger, a tuna or grilled cheese sandwich, fish and chips, or chicken nuggets) will save water, preserve land and slow global warming.

How Eating a PB&J Sandwich Slows Global Warming
Every time you eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or other plant-based meal instead of one that features red meat, such as a hamburger, you save the equivalent of almost 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. Eating a strictly plant-based meal compared to the average American lunch still saves 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That’s about 40 percent of the carbon you would save by driving a hybrid vehicle for the day instead of a standard sedan.

How Eating a PB&J Sandwich Saves Water
Growing plants for food takes a lot less water than raising animals. As a result, every time you substitute a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or some other plant-based meal for an animal-based meal such as a hamburger, you save about 280 gallons of water. Eat three PB&J sandwiches a month instead of animal-based meals and you can save as much water as you would by switching to a low-flow showerhead.

How Eating a PB&J Sandwich Saves Land
Raising animals for food takes a lot of space. For example, animal products require 6 to 17 times as much land as soy to produce the same amount of protein. Eating a plant-based lunch like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of a hamburger, ham sandwich, or another animal-based meal saves anywhere from 12 to 50 square feet of land from deforestation, overgrazing, and pesticide and fertilizer pollution.

How Eating One PB&J Sandwich Helps the Environment
By eating lower on the food chain—plants instead of animals—you also consume fewer resources. Why? Because, basically, everything you eat comes from plants. You either eat plants directly—in the form of fruits, vegetables and plant products such as peanut butter—or indirectly after animals have converted plants into meat, milk, eggs, butter and cheese.

The problem is that animals are not very efficient as living food factories that convert plants into food for humans. Animals use most of the plants they eat to produce the energy they need to walk around and keep breathing. To stay alive long enough to become part of your lunch or dinner menu, every cow, pig and chicken has to eat much more protein, carbohydrates and other nutrients than it will yield once the ax finally falls. As a result, it takes several pounds of plants to produce one pound of beef, pork, chicken, eggs or milk.

Inevitably, that means it also takes a lot more land, water and fuel to produce one pound of meat, milk or eggs than it does to produce one pound of edible plants. Not only do the animals need food, water and room to roam, but growing the plants to feed the animals that will, in turn, become food for you requires even more land and water as well as fuel for farm machinery and irrigation pumps.

To help provide some context, the PB&J Campaign says the water required to produce the beef in one hamburger could grow enough peanuts for 17 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And the land required to put that same beef patty on your bun could produce enough peanuts for 19 PB&J lunches.

How You and Your Diet Can Make a Difference
Basically, this all comes down to your power as a consumer. Every time you choose a hamburger, omelet or grilled cheese sandwich over a plant-based meal, you’re telling your local restaurants and supermarkets to buy more meat, eggs and dairy products. By choosing more plant-based meals, you’re asking for less meat and a more efficient use of resources. Either way, your unspoken but unmistakable messages are received by your local merchants and conveyed to wholesalers and farmers.


    Re: Peanut Butter & Jam for Earth Day
    by Robert Hamilton, April 25, 2010
    I got an map insert in a recent National Geographic Magazine that explained that the mumber of gallons of water used to produce one pound of beef, including water the cow drinks plus water used to grow their feed and clean their waste = 1857 gallons !! (US magazine = imperial units)

    I have been eating non-meat meals more frequently the past few months for several reasons. Tomorrow's lunch will be a non-meat choice. I am also planning to ride my bicycle to work a couple of days this week.

    Thanks for an inspirational posting Ross.

    rh
      Re: Peanut Butter & Jam for Earth Day
      by Jurjen Barel, April 25, 2010
      My girlfriend is vegetarian (not very strict, though, she simply doesn't prepare meat), so I don't have to much meat either. I must admit: I don't miss it a lot. She cooks delicious meals, nutritive and complete, I try to make something similar when I cook. Only when we eat out I sometimes just have a good steak or so. Since January I think we only had meat twice at home (and we don't eat in restaurants that often).

      People that claim they MUST have meat, just have to get a good recipe book. emoticon
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