Food Choice Factors

I would say that environmental considerations have some sway over which food purchases I make. I’m a pescatarian, mostly for health and environmental issues. When I was in high school I read Pollan’s work and met him on a Biology class field trip to hear him speak. While the fishing industry obviously has its ills I found it the lesser of two evils when compared to the beef and chicken industries (the treatment of workers in the meatpacking industry is also a consideration of mine).  When it comes to produce, I was raised on weekly deliveries from a CSA farm but now that I’m living with three roommates we usually get our food from a grocery store. On weekends we usually go to the farmer’s market just to check stuff out, but for the most part our food is not locally grown (it usually comes from close to where I grew up in California). In the past few years price has also become a huge factor in what I choose to eat. The cold hard truth is that sometimes, it costs less as a consumer to purchase foods grown in California than it would for me to pick food up at the farmer's markets in DC, Maryland or Virginia.

In the past few days, I would estimate that my food consumption had a greater environmental impact over my beverage consumption because for the most part, I drink tap water. I did however, also have a few bottles of wine from California wineries. Because I don’t usually drink sodas or juices, though I would have to assume that the bulk of my carbon footprint (when it comes to food) is derived from my food consumption, which as I mentioned earlier, is usually shipped from all the way across the country and consumes a lot of oil along the way. Some of the food I eat also comes in packaging (like pastas, canned tomatoes or vegetable broth to name a few), which I imagine would be more harmful than the occasional glass bottle of wine here or there.