Calories and Carbon
Calories and Carbon Ken Cook, Founder and President, Environmental Working Group Whendee Silver, Professor of Ecology, UC Berkeley; Marin Carbon Project Helene York, Director, Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One, moderator Grappling with the carbon impact of our food system is not easy. Faced with such uncertainty, Ken Cook\u2019s simple advice is apt: \u201cEat lower down the food chain \u2013 better for you, better for the planet.\u201d Cook, founder and president of the Environmental Working Group, joins Whendee Silver, professor of ecology, U.C. Berkeley, and Helene York, director, Bon App\xe9tit Management Company Foundation, for a discussion on calories, carbon, and the way forward. The panelists stress how far we\u2019ve come in such a short time. \u201cThere was a time, not too long ago, that if you went into an organic restaurant, or tried to shop for organic produce, you really wondered whether the food had been harvested, or maybe had escaped,\u201d Cook says. Helene York agrees, sharing the experience of Bon App\xe9tit, which serves 100 million meals each year. Over two years, her 500 chefs reduced the amount of meat served by 20%. But, York emphasizes, they did so without scrimping on taste. \u201cThe real key,\u201d she says, \u201cis to offer alternatives that our guests want to eat. They look good. They taste good. They\u2019re at a reasonable price point, and they\u2019re appetizing.\u201d Whendee Silver, who specializes in carbon number-crunching, stresses the importance of education. Researchers are valiantly attempting to assess the life-cycle cost of food, she says, but it is very hard to compare, say, the carbon impact of grass-fed versus feedlot beef. \u201cThere are big gaps in the data. Right now, many of the life-cycle analyses that we\u2019re working with have pretty significant uncertainties,\u201d she says. Despite the challenges, we can transition to grass-fed beef and seasonal, local produce, the panel says. \u201cWe have to be thoughtful as consumers about it. But I think people want straight-forward cues,\u201d Cook says. \u201cTake grass-fed beef. It\u2019s more expensive to produce in many cases. But make that investment and that sector is going to start to grow.\u201d This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 21, 2010\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices