Environmental ESS Internal Assessment Relationship between meat consumption and ecological footprint

Research question To what extent does high calorie diets lead to an increase in food mile and carbon footprint? Introduction Currently we are more concerned about our environment than ever. We try to use more and more eco friendly products in our lives as possible. For example, when we are going for shopping we are carrying an environmentally friendly paper bag as a great alternative to plastic bags and we are buying more organic products, reducing the use of pesticides. We are trying our best the main thing we tend to forget is to know where did the food we are shopping actually came from. That is food miles, they are basically the distance that the food has to travel from its point of origin that is the farm to our kitchen tables. We don’t think twice before buying the food at the grocery store but it has a drastic effect on our environment. As our countries are getting developed more and more food is being imported from other countries, so that we can have more “choices” to choose from. Imported food might seem appealing but the more miles the food has to travel to reach us the more carbon dioxide is being released and more fuel is consumed for the transportation. The three ways that the food is being transported are by flights, ships and by road. The least ecofriendly way for food to travel is by air because of the huge amount of greenhouse gasses given off by by aircrafts. every year millions of tones of CO2 is emitted by food miles just so we can have more choices on what items of food we can purchase. We need to decrease the food miles to be more sustainable. The easiest and most important way for doing this is by buying local foods. Food miles are heavily impacted by our dietary choices. And the purpose of this study is to see the relation between choices in different calorie diets and the carbon footprint it is causing. Many heavy diets consist of meats and other fruits which are mostly imported unlike the low calorie diets which mostly consists of vegetables. I believe that heavy calorie diets have a lot more carbon footprint because the food miles than the low carb diets. Hypothesis It is hypothesized that high calorie diets will have greater carbon emission. This is because in India many snacks, breakfast and meats that are preferred in heavier diets are not produced in India. So this food items are being imported from all over the world. When the food is being imported from different countries it will have a greater carbon footprint because of the higher food miles. Procedure 