As some of you may know, I’ve been happily writing my next book! This one is a snarky guide to killing the planet, broken down into 8 easy steps. In each of the 8 chapters, I’ve laid out exactly what you need to do to ensure the complete destruction of our environment, and everything in it.
Food is another really great way to stick it to the planet! It’s something that we do almost every day, and there are endless choices. Read on to learn all the fabulously evil ways that you can screw over the next generation while barely lifting a finger!
Method #1: You Are What You Eat
We don’t often jump to our diets when thinking about how to make it hot in here. (Unless you live in a hot climate without air conditioning, where spicy food is a cultural norm to help you feel cooler.) For most of us, food is simply the reward we stuff in our mouths after a hard day’s work, or when we need a break… or if we are bored, or anxious, or sad, or happy… or- sometime-, just because we are hungry. Food can do so much more for you than just give you nutrition to survive and fill the void where your father’s love used to be!
The production of food, and how far it travels to get to your plate, are two major factors that go into the carbon footprint of your diet. Did you grow up on a farm? That’s too bad, because the food you grew didn’t have to get shipped far enough to help burn much gas. Maybe you can make up for it by eating more of the stuff that takes exorbitant amounts of water, hormones, grain, and pesticides to create a single serving of calories! Or, you can substitute unusual foods that traveled from distant countries to arrive in the U.S., consuming vast transportation fuels, and maybe even depriving the country of origin of much needed calories. It’s not too late to eat worse for the planet!
Not only can your choice increase methane emissions (remember, those are worth more points that CO2 alone!), but the impacts can double down with other ethical quandaries, like humane conditions or world hunger.
This can be a tricky subject these days, what with all the food allergies, fad diets, and holier-than-thou vegan types. Nevertheless, you can rest easy by keeping a miniature version of this chart in your wallet to reference whenever you are contemplating your dinner choice at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The redder the choice, the worse for the planet. Easy peasy!
Remember, sometimes things can be accidentally vegan. Be wary of such items, as the vegans are conspiring to sneak this into all sorts of unfathomable places. That side of veggies being smothered by your steak? Vegan. Those delicious Doritos that came with your boxed lunch? Vegan. Even the all-American Oreo has been coerced by this ruthless community of earth-worshippers! Once you know how much of your diet might be currently made up of these low-emission foods, you are now armed with the information you need to become a super-emitter! No more garden fresh tomatoes for you, bucko!!
If you really are committed to making a difference, red meat is really your only choice. If you have religious conflicts that might prevent you from consuming this product, it’s super easy to convert to one of hundreds of religions that don’t regard cows as sentient beings. If you still feel conflicted, just look at the facts. Where else can you get so much bang for your buck? Not just CO2, but water consumption, runoff pollution, energy consumption, and so many more great ways to decimate our planet! So go fire up the grill, and don’t you dare let an Impossible Burger near that sacred altar.
Feeling embarrassed about not being a true carnivore? Are you concerned that you might be a closet vegetarian? Do you actually ENJOY eating healthier options? Don’t worry, we can still help you destroy the planet. Remember, not all foods are created equal. For example, instead of going apple picking this fall and having your honeycrisp travel a measly 20 miles to get in your belly, you can still make much less sustainable food choices.
How about a banana? Unless you’ve mastered the art of growing tropical trees in your McMansion, this deliciously portable fruit can be picked green, thrown in a shipping container, travel over oceans, get stored in a warehouse, be gassed, and then get trucked to your local CostCo for you to pick up! Now, the carbon footprint of a banana may still only be about 80 grams of CO2, but almost all the ones we get to eat are of the ‘Cavendish’ variety. The monoculture often requires clear cutting diverse forest habitats, and liberal use of pesticides and fungicides, so you get some bonus points there!
What else can you do to make your food choices worse for the planet? If your heart can’t take another ounce of artery-clogging cholesterol, there are still some good plant-based ways to do bad. Have you ever heard of palm oil? It’s like the high fructose corn syrup of the 21st century! Do-gooder grocery chains like Whole Foods have made this liquid gold corn syrup harder to come by, but palm oil is even EVILER! Firstly, it’s not grown here in north America, so we already know that we get to ship it from distant cultures with much laxer laws protecting the lands. Secondly, palm oil has rapidly infiltrated all sorts of heavily-processed, highly-packaged foods. Just read the box!
Palm oil means that you get to knock down rainforests, which is a double whammy. You not only get to kill thousands of CO2 absorbing trees that are working to counteract all those emissions you’ve worked so hard to generate, but you also get to destroy habitat for our distant cousins, like orangutans. Remember, there’s only room for ONE species at the top of the food chain. Don’t let those cute little baby orangutans crying for their endangered dead mommies fool you! Your need for this preciously ‘cheap’ palm oil in your french fries or cookies is obviously far more critical than their existence. Same goes for the elephants and tigers that are being wiped out as well. However, we need your help! In the past 20 years, the consumption of palm oil has only quadrupled. We need you to use MORE!
Method #2: Eat out, and eat often
One of the best ways we can do our duty to be wasteful is to make sure that we give every chance possible for food to go to waste. Nearly 40% of all food ends up in the trash, from farm to table. So if you eat out at a restaurant, there’s more opportunity for the kitchen to cut off imperfect scraps, reject ugly fruit, and scrape your plate of any leftover morsels that you were unwilling to take home after gorging yourself on king-sized portions. If you do get swindled into taking home a doggy bag, be sure not to give it to your dog. She deserved a fresh meal, after all.
No, your leftovers should go promptly into the fridge, preferably to the far back corner, where they can sit in isolation and manifest the next version of themselves. Once they have achieved leftover euphoria, only then may you remove the halo of mold and discard it directly into the trash bag.
No matter how many times your neighbor offers to take your organic spoilage for her compost bin, do NOT give in! It’s worth the stench of the rotten trash bag to know that your food waste is never going to become anything other than plastic-encased slime. Remember, if you let your food waste go into the landfill, it produces methane, which is 20 times worse than CO2! So, if the average household trash bag is made up of 20% food waste, make your goal 50% Throw it all away!!!
The best way to ensure that you pitch your dish is to pretend that you are turning over a new leaf (literally) by deciding to eat only salads. By the end of the week, that 10 gallon plastic container of pre-washed lettuce mix you so proudly bought will become a science experiment of epic proportions, and you’d surely be able to toss 90% of your health pledge. Time to go buy another plastic tub of empty promises!
If it accidentally got composted, it would create a friendly habitat for earthworms, turning into nutrient-rich soil, and then allow some yogi a chance to grow organic heirloom tomatoes with strange stripes and weird colors, which they would inevitably try to share with you. (And food that only travels from within your town has a tiny, baby-sized carbon footprint). Keep your devil tomatoes to yourself, yogi!!
There are so many other ways that we can ensure mutual destruction of our future. Keep an eye out for the entire book, How to Kill the Planet in 8 Easy Steps, coming soon in 2019! You will find the link to buy it at https://kellyweger.weebly.com/
Travel Grrrls 