Reducing Your Impact: Grocery Shopping

Facing the impact our daily choices have on the health of our environment is hard at first because it means acknowledging our habits need to change. Changing from routine grocery stores that happen to be most convenient, and cheap one stop shops, 'just down the street,' isn't going to suit everyone's lifestyle. That single daunting fact, can be what hinders you or your loved ones from making more Eco-friendly choices. The truth is, our large conglomerate grocery stores are polluting our bodies, the environment and your local economy. By changing your grocery store habits, if it makes sense for your lifestyle and desires to be more healthy, you will also reduce your families impact on our atmosphere, landfills, emissions and contribution to chemical contaminates in general. 

Stanford University Alumni page has a wonderful article titled  "The Impact of Your Grocery Store Choices: Nitty-Gritty," in which the author, Heather Benz, gives an overview of the types of affects the grocery market has on our environment. Exert below:

"A casual stroll down a grocery store aisle shows that it’s not easy to determine the environmental impacts of any given food item. The food industry is a major player in such environmental issues as deforestation, land-use change, water wastage and excess fertilizer run-off. And that’s to say nothing of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with of agriculture, shipping, and food processing and storage. Carbon emissions are a good proxy for many of these environmental issues, so let’s focus specifically on the climate impact of food here.

Switching from the average American diet to one of all-local ingredients is equivalent to driving 1,000 fewer miles annually. Eliminating red meat can lead to even greater carbon savings: 750 miles if you simply switch to chicken one day per week, and 1,000 miles if you switch from red meat to a vegetarian meal just once a week."

Benz reveals a few key approaches to reducing your impact while grocery shopping. Shop local farmers markets for more fresh options, avoid processed foods which are harmful to your body and emit more carbon into the atmosphere being made and eat less red meat, are a few of her highlights. 

Environmental Science and Technology published a study titled "Food Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States," in which the impact of switching to  less red meat is illustrated much greater as seen in the exert below.  

"Shifting totally away from red meat and dairy

toward chicken/fish/eggs or a vegetable-based diet reduces

GHG emissions equivalent to 5340 mi/yr (8590 km/yr) or

8100 mi/yr (13 000 km/yr), respectively."

The Ethicurean reports even further on the benefits of eating local sourced food at farmers markets in the article titled, "Fighting climate change: Food miles vs. food choices."  This article focuses on how the actual pollution from transportation of food in vehicles is much less than the actual processes in which the food is made. Primary benefits of eating local food in this article surround eating better options that are not processed rather than saving the environment.

Whichever source you research on the matter you will find that grocery store shopping impacts the environment and your health. Processed food options available at your local Safeway, QFC, Albertsons, Costco, etc. are harmful and adding plant based & whole foods to your diet from local farmer's markets and butchers will improve the environment and reduce your exposure risk to harmful chemical processes.