This week on Handful, I discussed the environmental impact of meat, including beef, pork, and chicken. If you haven’t listened yet, each episode and its main takeaways are below!
Episode 1 – Welcome to Handful
This is the first ever episode of Handful! I introduced myself and explained what Handful is: a really, really short podcast. Each episode is one to three minutes long. Our hosts are Alexa, Layla and Jarred. We’ll have a new episode each weekday!
Episode 2 – Medium Rare, Cheddar, Tomatoes & the Impossible Burger
- It takes 100 calories of feed to get 1 calorie of beef for human consumption.
- The vast majority of crops that the world grows go to feeding animals. It’s an inefficient process that contributes to climate change and antibiotic resistance. For example, raising cows for meat contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest.
- A possible solution – the Impossible Burger.
- Meat Without Animals TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxXUWDt0Mqw
Episode 3 – A George Foreman Grill
- Looking at four metrics — land use, irrigation, greenhouse gas emissions, and reactive nitrogen — pork is more resource efficient than beef.
- While it takes as much as 100 calories of feed to produce 1 calorie of beef for human consumption, it takes more like 11 calories of feed to get one calorie of pork.
- Read the study comparing the environmental impact of five animal proteins: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/33/11996#sec-1.
- Reactive Nitrogen: https://www.wired.com/2008/05/reactive-nitrog/.
Episode 4 – KFC
- It requires nine calories of feed to get one calorie of chicken for human consumption, a little less than for pork and less than one tenth of the calories that it takes to produce beef.
- Processing chicken meat to make it boneless or to create chicken nuggets requires high energy and water inputs.
- KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken, which is a plant-based chicken nugget, gets its protein from wheat and soy.
- Beyond Meat, which developed Beyond Fried Chicken for KFC, aims to initiate a shift from animal to plant-based meat to create a positive impact in four areas: human health, climate change, global resource constraints, and animal welfare.
Episode 5 – How Burgers Cause Climate Change
- It takes an incredible amount of resources to produce meat, such as the land and water used to grow crops that are fed to animals. Using land for farming can harm biodiversity in a region. Additionally, the process of producing meat creates large amounts of greenhouse gasses and ultimately is contributing to climate change.
- Beef is much more harmful than pork and poultry, but all have a negative environmental impact.
- Our next episode, hosted by Layla, will be released on Monday!
impossible burgers climate change; impossible burgers climate change
I’m Alexa, the Founder and Editor of Novel Hand. I graduated from Vanderbilt University with degrees in Political Science, Economics and Spanish, and I currently study law in Texas. At Novel Hand, I’m specifically interested in learning about topics related to justice and poverty, and how to create equitable, sustainable impact. You can reach me at novelhandco@gmail.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
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