We are human beings, we make the traditions so we should have the right to change those traditions. – Molala Yousafzai
The premise behind Food Choice Awareness is the belief that the vast majority of people are kind, courageous and are moved to act for the good of themselves and their community. And that if people were given the information they needed to act according to their own intrinsic values, our world would be more just, healthful, and sustainable.
Our food choices are unconscious and automatic. What we chose to eat emanates from a belief system and the practices of our unique culture or social group. (And throw in a bit of evolutionary biology to drive our taste for calorie dense foods that allowed our ancestors to survive long enough to reproduce!) Currently, human population is 7.4 billion. Our numbers are expected to increase by 35% in the coming decades, and increased meat consumption is the dietary trend of the developing world.
Since food production is the largest human endeavor, it is no longer possible to ignore the impact of our diet on the natural environment, as well as our health, and the billions of animals caught in the system who are confined, tortured and destroyed each year. Many signs point to a planet whose resources are so stretched that natural systems are collapsing, leading to another great mass extinction of life on earth. Maintaining the status quo is simply not possible, nor is ignorance, because no one will be shielded from the negative outcomes.
When the human population doubled from 1960 to 2000, milk consumption doubled, meat consumption tripled, egg consumption quadrupled and chicken consumption increased eight-fold. As population doubled, humans climbed up the food chain, the exact opposite of what an intelligent species should have been doing. –Sailesh Rao, Climate Healers
While there are many areas of human activity that need examination and readjustment in light of our population explosion and rate of consumption, what we eat has a vast impact and is potentially the one behavior that we individuals could most easily adapt on our journey into the future. So much good can come from a humble lunch!
You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.
Food Choice Awareness strives to be a place to find out about animal rights, the environment, climate change, justice, human health and the economy. The goal is to inform the public of the incredible power of food choice as a means to create a better world.
Much of the content at Food Choice Awareness here is curated from organizations, writers, scientists, journalists and citizen advocates and is organized into three categories: Food Choice and the Environment; Food Choice and Human Health; and Food Choice and Ethics. Resources exploring the impactful intersection of food choice and climate change is addressed here. The only bias you’ll encounter on these pages is a lean toward recommending action toward addressing justice, anthropogenic climate change and our broken food system to support health and respect for the natural world.
Awareness is all about restoring your freedom to choose what you want instead of what your past imposes on you. – Deepak Chopra