[Applause]
picture your perfect burger what image
came to mind for many it will be the
typical beef burger but I don’t think
they’d be too much opposition if I
proposed the new definition for the
perfect burger one that is tasty but is
not unhealthy not expensive and has a
low impact on the environment more on
that later first let’s look back in time
once and this was not very long ago
people ate beef another meat only
occasionally but then it became normal
to eat meat every day and some people
began to have meat in nearly every meal
businesses they just wanted to sell them
all sorted to offer steak night and
burger challenges far more meat than
anyone needed or even wanted but somehow
I became trendy so people bought into it
there’s a restaurant called the heart
attack grill this is not fiction you can
ten thousand calorie burger that’s four
days worth of food in fact they now
offer right up to an octuple burger and
you can optionally add 40 slices of
bacon on top if you weigh in at over 25
stone that’s 160 kilograms you eat for
free can you believe that as you might
expect this is in the USA the American
dream a but this one is local and you
probably see one similar mass producing
beef comes with all sorts of unintended
consequences the animals themselves are
often not treated at all well the
excessive red meat leads to disease and
obesity in the people and the whole
planet suffers for cows like lungs being
ruminants animals produce methane a
greenhouse gas around 34 times more
potent than co2 cows need huge amounts
more land and water than other animals
and are the leading cause of
deforestation reducing how much co2 can
be absorbed instead of going into the
atmosphere I may be the first person at
Ted or TEDx the reference in XKCD comic
I’ve checked the source so it seems
sound can you see it’s a great
visualization but it does show a
disturbing reality in the middle is the
weight of all those humans and that much
bigger section on the left are all the
cattle we keep for our consumption look
how few wild mammals there are by
comparison dotted around the edges in
just a few decades humans have driven a
huge drop in biodiversity as we
monopolize the earth for ourselves and
as we become more aware of the impact of
our addiction to beef are we reducing
how much of it we eat no according to
the World Resources Institute global
demand for beef is projected to increase
by ninety-five percent by 2050 you may
be realizing why i call this talk the
burger apocalypse human impact on the
earth is not sustainable we’re making
improvements in some areas
the Paris agreement has just come into
force that’s a huge step forward but
currently things are still getting worse
mass producing beef is one example of
that but beef is just one part of our
food system I prefer to look at all
foods and focus on the solutions rather
than the problems government’s a
businesses have a part to play but what
I really want to tell you today is there
is a range of easy ways you can put your
food carbon footprint I call this my ABC
of low-carbon eating a avoid wasting
food one third of all food produced is
wasted in the UK as is the known for
developed countries much more is wasted
in homes than in food manufacture or
retail for every five bags of shopping
we bring home we put one of them
straight in the wheelie bin on the way
to the front door well not directly but
a bit wasted here a bit there that’s
what it amounts to and most of this is
deemed avoidable or food that could have
been eaten I’ll give you an example
potatoes in the UK we throw out 10
million potatoes a day in households
they’re fully avoidable we throw out the
equivalent way to gain in potato skins
their cluster is possibly avoidable
because some people eat them household
in the UK spend 500 pounds a year on the
food that they throw away and the thing
is it’s quite easy to avoid a lot of it
you just have to think about it in
advance if you were asked what tip would
you give people to avoid wasting food
I’ve been asking people this question
and their responses submitted well most
important is plan your meals before
going to the supermarket so that you
only buy what you need and will use if
you do have extra use it in another meal
or freeze it I’ve learned that I don’t
get through a whole loaf while it’s
fresh so now I put four or six slices in
the freezer when I first open it
then there’s expiry dates people have
opposing views on this one some say pay
attention to them which makes sense it
means we take the contents of your
cupboard or fridge so the items going
off sooner is throughout the front and
not forgotten about or they say ignore
expiry date don’t throw something like
bread or fruit out just because of the
date instead use your senses if
something like bread or fruit looks okay
and smells okay it probably is so let’s
say avoid wasting food be by in season
food the carbon footprint of some fruits
and vegetables can be more than 10 times
higher when they’re not in season let’s
take a look at that typical burger again
right now in November some of the common
toppings the lettuce the tomatoes
they’re not in season in the UK did you
ever consider that a burger eating now
or through the winter and spring has a
higher carbon footprint than the same
burger in the summer people get
preoccupied with red of whether food is
local but whether it’s in season is more
important for its carbon footprint in
his book how about a bananas Mike Mendez
Lee tells us that bananas in the UK a
low carbon as they come from Central or
South America by boat conversely you
might get UK grown strawberries in the
winter but they’ll be grown in a
hothouse using fossil fuel energy so it
could be 12 times higher carbon than
between May to September when they’re in
season so did you get that fruit grown
in season over 5,000 miles away can be
much lower carbon than fruit growing
nearby out of season asparagus is one of
your five a day all year round but by it
outside the UK short growing season of
april to june and it’s around 30 times
higher as it will be air freighter din
from peru with global trade and
supermarkets selling most food year
round it can be hard to know which foods
are in season
so to solve this I’ve created a
seasonality charts so you can check
before going to the shops so that’s a L
sorry a is avoid wasting food be by in
season food but the action that can have
the biggest effect is sick choose
low-carbon food more food accounts for
between twenty and thirty percent of
greenhouse gas emissions choosing
low-carbon food more sounds
straightforward but like with
seasonality it can be hard to know which
foods are high on which a low carbon so
let’s take a closer look i’m going to
show you two foods at a time and i want
you to guess which one has the lower
carbon footprint here’s the first pair
is beef or pork lower carbon they’re all
per kilogram of that food so I can hear
most of you are thinking pork and that’s
right in fact beef and lamb or around
three times higher carbon than pork or
chicken may lead you to the methane
produced so even people who don’t want
to reduce how much meat they eat can
switch from beef or lamb to pork and
chicken and cook two thirds of the
Associated carbon footprint off bread or
rice think about the underlying reasons
so as I’ve heard again a lot of people
say rice because they think bread is
processed but bread is lower rice is
about three times as high rice is high
carbon for several reasons over ninety
percent of rice is grown in flooded
paddy fields and the absence of oxygen
in the soil generates methane it takes
energy to pump that water into the
fields and a lot of fertilizer is used
which releases nitrous oxide a
greenhouse gas much more potent than
methane transporting it usually from
Southeast Asia only adds a little more
by comparison the next one tomatoes or
oranges are lower despite being imported
mostly from Spain for the UK market with
their thick skin like the bananas I
mentioned earlier they’ll be transported
by land or sea so they’re low carbon
with tomatoes there’s a big variation if
you grow your own in late summer that’s
very low carbing for purchase tomatoes
most of the year in the UK they’ll be
artificially heated so that leads to a
high carbon footprint bringing them in
from Spain as a little better in the
winter you can stick to tinned tomatoes
and generally the large salad classic
salad tomatoes are better because other
specialist varieties are lower yield
cord or chicken it’s cod fish in general
is a low carbon source of protein or
demand for chicken is now so high tens
of billions of chickens a year that we
need to grow fields of grain and soya
bean just to feed the chickens court a
court at sea so they feed themselves and
it doesn’t take a huge amount of diesel
to get a boatload of fish overfishing is
an important issue but that’s separate
to the carbon footprint you can use the
good fish guide to check your fishes
from a sustainable source and last one
cheese or chicken yeah unfortunately for
cheese lovers which is most of us
chooses a lot higher carbon than chicken
at least twice as high Jesus dairy so it
needs those methane belching cows but if
you have a smaller portion of cheese
than you were chicken it’s not so bad
because it’s grunt for gram and soft
cheese is lower impact than hard cheese
as it needs a lot less milk people
sometimes ask me how different diets can
pair for those really a high amount of
meat their food carbon footprint is
two-and-a-half times higher than vegans
but I’m not saying you need to go vegan
people can take one step down on this
chart and it makes a big difference
except cutting out fish because they’re
low carbon
and as I said switching from high to
lower impact meets cuts off around
twelve percent the food carbon footprint
going back to the burger apocalypse
there may be another solution remember I
proposed the new definition for the
perfect burger have you heard of the
impossible burger it launched in the
u.s. recently after five years of
research it’s a plant-based burger their
magic ingredient is heem which is what
makes meet me tea but you can get it
from plants as well as animals it has 18
the greenhouse gas emissions than beef
but it smells sizzles and apparently
tastes like beef meat eaters and burger
lovers are trying it and giving it
positive reviews it may just be
something that persuades people to
switch have something taste is a bigger
factor for the average person than the
ethical or environmental argument
hopefully it will spread but for now
please don’t fly over to New York just
another incentive is costs making modest
improvements across my abc would save
the average household wanted 200 pounds
a year more substantial improvements
would save around 500 pounds and for
eliminating avoidable food waste buying
early in season food and switching to
low-carbon food the saving approaches a
thousand pounds a year one more great
way to cut your food carbon footprint
and again save money eat less especially
protein the world resources institute
says we need around 50 grams of protein
a day yet it’s now common in the West to
consume much more than this and the
excess protein is often the expensive
unhealthy high carbon kind and it’s
similar right across my ABC there are
three great reasons to switch to
low-carbon food it reduces your impact
on a planet it’s very likely to be
healthier and it saves you money so how
can you do your bit to fight the burger
apocalypse by following my ABC of
low-carbon eating avoid wasting food by
in-season food and choose low-carbon food more thank