2x per day, everyday for 22yrs, I ate meat. I LOVED it. My favourite food was a burger and a dish without meat wasn’t a proper meal in my head.
When I went veggie, people’s reaction made it seem like I’d turned into a blue alien.
So since I started Climate Unf*cked Podcast, I’ve wanted to talk about food, and Frank Holleman was a perfect guest for this.
But instead of waterboarding you with food facts, I want to focus on a phrase
The imperfect environmentalist
Food and diet does not lend itself to imperfection.
You either do or don’t eat meat - you’re either vegetarian, vegan or a planet-destroying, beef loving murderer.
But that’s not how behaviour change happens. It happens little by little.
So I wanted to know how someone helping 150k + people with behaviour change (about a divisive and personal topic) approaches it.
“How can we make the threshold so low that it almost feels ridiculously easy?“
“And that is why we always start with, okay, replace beef with chicken or pork.”
Some people will be outraged at that suggestion. ‘You have to kill more chickens to replace 1 cow’, ‘that will just increase the demand of chicken and pork’, ‘it’s horribly cruel.’
But, the carbon footprint of chicken is 80-90% lower than beef’s.
So when you suggest choosing chicken over beef, it does 2 things: 1 - they reduce their food’s emissions. But importantly, 2 - “you’re part of the solution in some way. “
“You’ve moved into the general direction of, ‘I’m willing to change my habits to reduce my climate impact’ And once they’ve taken that step, then there’s a little bit of momentum.”
The takeaway
Fixing food’s climate impact leans heavily on behaviour change. So (for yourself or someone else), focus on little steps that move in the direction of: More plants (+ tofu!) and less animals.
Replacing beef is level 1 of Frank’s 3 levels for taking climate action with your food. Watch the episode here (levels are at 26mins in)
Have a fab week,
Rob :)
P.S. An incredible video I came across this week, related to this.
P.P.S. Me, almost exactly 8 years ago!
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