Start giving a damn about this for your own sake.

I want to talk about food- the most basic necessity for all living beings.

No food = no energy

No energy = no actions

No actions = no drama

No drama = no enjoyment

No enjoyment = no point in living

So now the importance of food is obvious. Look at how important food is. With so much importance being given to food, isn't it obvious that much care is necessary for making sure that people get enough food to eat? Isn't it necessary that we give a damn about the food we eat?

By now you would've got the point behind this post- educating people about being conscious about what they eat, and beyond that- how much difference can be made by just being conscious.

Every single research that has been conducted to study the effects of animal-based food on human health has been concluding the same thing over and over again. People who adopt a plant-based diet live longer, have significantly lesser mortality rates and significantly lesser chances of being infected by diseases and disorders (cardiac issues, obesity, diabetes and the sort). If you don't want to take my word for that, consider the opinions of the World Health Organization.

There is, of course, the other issue of animal-based products being harmful to the planet, and that's real. Animal agriculture generates as much CO2 as the entire transportation industry globally. Isn't that astronomical? And if we can make changes to the transportation industry by switching to electric cars, shouldn't we also make changes to our diets to accommodate a healthier diet and have a lesser negative impact on the planet?

Let's look at some big brands making the switch. According to Business Insider, big fast-food brands are already making announcements about plant-based meat alternatives becoming part of their menus. These include Burger King, McDonald's, White Castle, Hard Rock Cafe, The Cheesecake Factory, TGI Fridays, Denny's, Hardee's, and many more. Even Starbucks has launched a new range of plant-based milk varieties as part of its menu starting this January. Now, the thing with businesses has always been the same- they have always been very good at predicting future trends and being the early birds to adopt trendy practices. So doesn't it mean that the future is going to be a world where plant-based food is going to be more predominant? Doesn't it mean that the way we eat is going to change? Doesn't it also mean that we need to get ourselves prepared for that change?

Ok, let's leave the trend aspect and focus on science. Surely that's something that can't be argued upon because the facts are 100% clear. Going plant-based has zero negative effects and tons of positive effects for both- personal as well as the planet's health. With that on one side, eating animal-based products has tons of negative effects and no positive effects that can't be matched by plant-based diets. What it means is that there's no unique benefit from eating animal-based food and that you're not going to miss out on nutrition by making the switch to plant-based diets. Let's look at another piece of the science behind this. You would've probably heard of this, and it's called the 10% rule. It means that plants only convert 10% of the solar energy that's available to them into food that can be consumed by the next level of organisms on the food chain. The same applies to every level of food chain- Herbivores only pass on 10% of the energy they acquired from plants, onto meat-eating animals, and so on, because the remaining 90% is used by each level of the food chain for other life-supporting activities like hunting, searching for food, mating, etc. In other words, the efficiency of each level of the food chain is only 10%. So only 10% of what goes into a level of the food chain, goes out to the next level of the food chain. So now let's compare the meat-based diet and plant-based diet. If you eat the cow that ate the plant, then you'd be getting only 10% of the cow's nutrition levels, which is already 10% of what the plant had to offer. So you're getting only 1% of the plant's energy reserves. Now let's suppose that you ate the plant directly- you'd be getting 10% of the plant's nutrition levels. So you're essentially getting 10 times the nutrition of a meat-eater. This is an undisputed fact that science has proven. So now I hope you get an idea about the bigger picture- just imagine the unnecessary inefficiencies that come into picture when you eat meat-based. And this is unnecessary because isn't it obvious that what the cow meat gives out, is derived from the plant that it ate? Isn't it quite obvious that if you eat the plant, it's going to give you the same set of nutrients at a higher efficiency level? There's another issue as well. Since you're eating the cow, which itself is an organism and has its own bodily systems, there are chances of ingested food not being digested properly. Suppose the cow eats leafy vegetables. Obviously, not all of the starch is going to be converted to glucose in its blood. So obviously that's inducing more inefficiency in the system. So by the time you eat the meat, so much of the energy reserves and nutrients have already been lost. And this is unnecessarily losing the nutrients when we could just eat the plant directly. It's like this- you want to go from A to B, and there's a smooth, direct road, has no bumpy patches, and takes a very minimal amount of petrol as the route is short. But, you want to take a longer route which takes much more petrol as it's much longer a path, has so many bumpy patches and causes a lot of health issues and side-effects.

Then the biggest concern is this- population boom. The United Nations has predicted that by 2100, the world population is set to hit around 10 Billion. Now to support such a high level of population, we need to restructure our food production systems and the supply chains as well. What the world has been following till today is an age-old way of growing plants using monoculture- just sticking to a few crop varieties that are water-intensive but staple diets. We have essentially been restricting ourselves to eating only a few particular types of plants- wheat, rice and maize. The consumption of fruits and vegetables has reduced over the years, and this needs to change, to include more varieties of crops and plants.

Talking about food, the amount of meat consumption has increased and that poses a big problem to the sustainability of the food system as well as that of the planet, and here's how it works. The average human being requires around 1800-1900 kCal per day. So that means that the per capita production of food worldwide should be at least 1800-1900 (ideally), but because the system is inefficient, the number should be more than that to account for the losses and wastage in the transportation of food, etc. Production per capita is the amount of food that can be produced for each person on the planet- basically, take the total amount of food produced daily around the world and divide it by the population of the world. That's sort of a good way of looking at it. Now take a guess as to how much we actually produce- 2700kCal. That's after accounting for the inefficiencies and the losses. So we're producing way more than what's needed to supply food to every person on Earth. So why are people dying because of hunger? It doesn't make sense right? Like you're producing food at a rate of 2700kCal per day when the requirement is only 1800-1900kCal per day. That should give you surplus right? Why do we have a deficit?

Two main reasons can explain this. One is that a lot of food is wasted, and the other being animal agriculture.

Let's look at the food wastage problem. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the US (FAO),

Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted.

This wastage is split differently in different countries. In developing countries, the wastage is mainly due to logistical issues, lack of technology and knowledge about best practices in agriculture, and in richer countries, the wastage is mainly due to consumer behaviour. Yes, you and me. Our choices can make an astronomical difference. We need to stop stressing so much on 'good-looking' fruits and vegetables and start looking at the nutrition levels instead. We need to make the switch to more organically produced food and be more responsible and conscious in the way we shop for things. Just take the time to read what's mentioned in the labels. Surely spending 10-20 seconds reading the label won't cause you any harm.

Food loss and waste also amount to a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labour and capital and needlessly produce greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming and climate change.

There's another perspective onto this- the way we eat food. We often take too much food onto our plates and end up wasting a lot of it. This is highly unacceptable. You could say that the serving portion size was a bit large. Acceptable, but why can't you just go out there and demand a smaller portion size? Obviously, businesses are going to listen to the demands of customers, and if you keep demanding a smaller portion size or a buffet-like system where you're charged only for the amount you eat, they're going to provide it one day or the other. Or even better- ask for a slightly lesser number of nuggets when ordering, and tell them to charge you slightly less if you think you won't be able to finish the whole serving. Tell them that you would ask for more if needed. Demand can get anything going. I mean, you're paying them money- so obviously they're going to listen to your demands and give you what you ask for. Certainly possible with the will.

Now comes the second reason- animal agriculture. Over the past few decades, meat consumption has sky-rocketed. Remember the 10% rule from earlier on? Now apply the same 10% rule to all the animals that we eat. According to the Economist,

Humans are easily outnumbered by our farm animals. The combined total of chickens (19 billion), cows (1.5 billion), sheep (1 billion) and pigs (1 billion) living at any one time is three times higher than the number of people. But those figures are dwarfed by the number of animals we eat. An estimated 50 billion chickens are slaughtered for food every year – a figure that excludes male chicks and unproductive hens killed in egg production. In the last 50 years, the number of people on the planet has doubled. But the amount of meat that we eat has tripled.

Obviously, there's an urgent necessity to cut down on the amount of meat we eat. There are definitely arguments stating that humans have been eating meat for a very long time now and that our system has evolved a bit to eating meat and deriving nutrients from it. That could be agreed upon, but look at the other side of things- the trend concerning meat consumption is just growing out of control. It's almost as though we humans are on a meat-frenzy thing. We just can't get enough meat at all and want more and more meat. But there's only so much meat that the planet can support, and beyond that, the whole system just collapses, bringing ecological and economic disasters. I mean, how many more years would it take for us humans to wake up to the fact that excessive meat production causes a lot of problems environmentally as well as for our health?

Obviously, there are steps that we can take. It doesn't mean that we need to stop eating meat right now. But we surely need to cut down on the amount of meat that we eat. If you eat meat 3 times a day, 7 days a week, cut down on one meal a day and switch that one meal to entirely plant-based. That small step is going to have a profound effect on your health, as well as the health of the planet. If you consume dairy products multiple times a day, cut down on one of those products and switch to some plant-based milk. Try new plant-based items regularly to find out some new and exciting food items. Who knows, you may one day try some vegan burger and end up liking it more than the normal chicken burger. You never know until you try.

At last, the whole point here is to get people to become a bit more responsible every day. You don't need to wake up tomorrow and go hard on yourself saying that you're not going to eat any animal product ever again. All you need to do is to try substituting a part of your animal-based meal with plant-based food. And what's more important is that you be more conscious. By being conscious, you become more responsible over a while- that happens naturally. Just be conscious of the ingredients of the food that you buy, and be conscious of the processes that those food items would've gone through every time you buy them. By simply being conscious of what we're eating and how that food item is produced, we would constantly remind ourselves about the quality of our diet and thereby be more responsible.

I want to leave you with this-

For many people on the planet, food is a given. But for the staggering more than 820 million people who are hungry, food is not a guarantee. We need to increase our respect for food, as well as for those who produce it, the natural resources that go into producing it and the people who live without access to it.