Lesson 11 Merged

BIOL 203 Fundamental Nutrition
Lesson 11 - (Un)Sustainable Diets
[Lesson 11.1– Introduction]
[Sustainability – A Wicked Problem]

A wicked problem is defined as one that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete
and contradictory information in addition to multiple interpretations of the problem based on
one’s values. Coined in 1973 by two social scientists, wicked problems include reducing crime
rates, poverty, universal healthcare, and even obesity.
The sustainability of our food systems is one such wicked problem. But often, we read about
citizen groups claiming to have found the solution to the problems facing food sustainability.
Some groups strongly champion localism — a diet based on eating foods grown locally, while
others argue for organically grown foods. But of course, wicked problems aren’t so easily solved.
That's what makes them wicked.
[(Un)sustainable Diets]
Mark Sagoff, an environmental philosopher borrowing from Archilochus, a Greek philosopher, and
Isaiah Berlin, has split environmentalists into two groups: the hedgehogs and the foxes.
Hedgehogs know one big thing, but foxes know many.
Mark Sagoff considers this dichotomy fitting to describe how people generally think about
environmental issues.
The hedgehogs focus on just one central issue while foxes consider environmental woes to be
multi-faceted and inextricably linked to many other issues.
Foxes see wicked problems.
[Lesson Objectives]
The structure of this lesson begins by describing the sustainability of our diets through the lens of
a hedgehog by attributing the source of the problem to one big issue: human population growth
coupled with affluence and technology. Otherwise known as the IPAT [eye-pat] equation. In other
words, our Impact on the land is a consequence of Population growth, Affluence, and Technology.
There is some truth to it. So we’ll investigate.
We will then run with the foxes and see food sustainability issues as highly complex with no simple
solution. Once we are done, even the darling organic chicken will be taxing the environment.
This final lesson will end from where we started – with the Canadian food guide, and ask how we
can amend it to create a healthy and sustainable food guide for the Canadian population.
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[Lesson 11.2– The Hedgehog and the Fox: Perspectives on the Sustainability of Our
Diets]
[Hedgehog Perspective]
Let’s put our hedgehog glasses on.
We can trace the problem all the way back to when we learned to control fire with the intent of
cooking.
We emerged out of Africa as cooks, some 100,000 years ago.
We are the only species on this planet that must eat cooked food. After hunting for animals, the
prehistoric man learned to cook their flesh. The prehistoric woman learned to cook inedible grains
and tubers to make them palatable.
Have you ever wondered why nature television shows often depict gorillas lazily sitting and they
always seem to be chewing? That’s because they don’t eat cooked food.
To increase the bioavailability of energy-yielding nutrients in uncooked food, formidable amounts
of mastication is required.
Imagine all of the densely wound up starch granules locked inside of intact plant cells, reinforced
with cellulose. Gorillas and chimpanzees chew for several, continuous hours per day. Luckily for us,
we eat cooked food and can spend most of our time doing other things.
Unluckily for us, our need for fuel to cook food creates a much larger environmental footprint than
any other organism on this planet.
Up until the early 18th century, this fuel was wood.
Forests were cleared to make way for agriculture and wood was our singular source of fuel for
cooking.
We are very destructive by design.
We want to have our cake and cook it too.
[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

No matter how lightly we tread, agriculture will always have an impact on the land.
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The mineral-rich soils get literally mined by plant roots and the nutrients stored in the plant
biomass are removed from the land when plants or their fruits get harvested by us or grazing
animals.
Diminishing returns after a few crop rotations is inevitable.
This is likely what motivated David Quammen [kwah-men] to famously say that, “agriculture is the
greatest curse to befall on humanity.”

With the advent of any permanent settlement across space and time, came the depletion of soil
fertility.
With the rise of any culture beyond basic subsistence, came the cultivation of cash crops for trade.
John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”, nicely depicts the rise and
crash of the Greek Mycenaean [my-seh-NEE-ahn] culture in the 15th to 12th century BC. The rise
of this society was spurred by the soil’s fertility and bountiful trees, while its crash was
precipitated by the loss of soil nutrients and forest cover.
We hubristically think to be in control of the land and its resources, but in fact, it is the
environment that sets our heights and times our fall.

Fast forward to the 15th century and onward.
With greater affluence came more significant impacts.
By this time, agriculture greatly expanded to include cash crops, like sugar cane, to feed the desires
of the elite, like the Queen whom we met in lesson 4.
The same can be seen today, where water-poor countries have giant soft drink corporations
draining the land of water for the production of Coca-Cola to quench the thirst of the elite.

A dramatic example of the impacts of sugar cane plantations can be found on the island of
Madeira. When it was discovered in 1420, it was described as having “not a foot of ground that
was not entirely covered with trees” and “trees that seemed to touch the sky”.
Before being sold as sugar, the sugar cane plant had to be processed.
The cane stalk was crushed between wooden rollers, forcing out the sucrose solution, and then
boiled. The wood from basswood and cedar trees furnished much of the fuel.
In 1494, the island’s sugar industry needed about 60,000 tons of wood just for boiling the cane.
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After just 240 years after the Portuguese arrived on the island of Madeira, the tree mantle
vanished and all that was left was a barren island.
We often romanticize about the past. The past, as it turns out, was not so good. We need to cast
our sights on the future.

What we started agriculturally, during the pre-industrial time, continues today with pathological
fervor. Affluence makes us stupid.
When we look at the distribution of cropland in North America, what we see is mostly a mosaic of
soybeans and maize plantations. Both function primarily as feed for livestock – soybeans provide
the protein to build muscle tissue, while the corn provides the energy. The corn that does not end
up as feed, ends up getting deconstructed to make high-fructose corn syrup.
Stated otherwise, as affluence increased, our appetite for red meat and sugar increased, which
correlated with the epidemic rise in cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes. A diet that is both
unhealthy and unsustainable.

Technological advancements have had particularly devastating impacts on the environment.
Nitrogen gas makes up about 80% of our atmosphere. But this form of nitrogen is unavailable for
plants or us to use because it is locked in a triple bond with another nitrogen atom.
In 1909, we learned how to convert this unreactive nitrogen into reactive forms like ammonia and
nitrate.
Reactive forms of nitrogen can be used by plants and other organisms to make amino acids or
other nitrogen-containing compounds.
Modern agriculture converts around 120 million tonnes of unreactive nitrogen gas per year from
the atmosphere into reactive forms.

Every year, surface runoff from agricultural fields drains into coastal waters. This nitrogen-rich
water leads to the exponential growth of aquatic microorganisms like algae. The thick cover of
algal blooms causes the dissolved oxygen of the water below to become exhausted.
These zones of depleted oxygen are called dead zones, and are shown here on this map. Every
year we have fish and amphibians that suffocate along these dead zones. This effect is so
dramatic, that it can be seen from space.
To reduce the occurrence of dead zones, it has been suggested to establish a cap on the amount of
reactive nitrogen released to 25% of its current value. The happy consequence of this would
benefit both the environment and our health.
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[Fox Perspective - Intro]

Take off your hedgehog glasses, and let’s complicate matters. Let’s run with the foxes.
Michael Carolan in “The real cost of cheap food” does an outstanding job at describing food
sustainability as a fox. He argues that the unsustainability of our food systems today are not easily
solved.
He argues that the methods of production, storage, transport, and even preparation all have
impacts.
By focusing only on one part of the food system, like transport (from which the localism tribe
stems) one can unwittingly increase the environmental burden to other steps along the food
system.
His book sheds light on all steps of the commodity food chain – from field to fork or garbage.
[Fox Perspective – Production – How and Where Food is Produced]

When we consider one food item to be more or less ”sustainable”, one must consider how it was
grown in addition to where it was grown.
About 80% of the global cultivated land is rainfed and produces 60% of the world’s food.
Rainfed agriculture can be more sustainable because it does not remove water from aquifers or
nearby lakes and rivers. The agricultural field is fed with rainwater.
But in hot, dry countries the amount of evaporative water loss limits the amount of crop
produced, in addition to causing soil erosion.
Irrigated agriculture land produces 40% of the world’s food but accounts for up to 80% of global
freshwater withdrawals.
This water is extracted from non-renewable sources like the water stored in aquifers below the
ground.
Both methods can be ameliorated using better agricultural practices that maximize the crop-per-
drop.
[Fox Perspective – Production – What is Produced]

Virtual water is the amount of water that was used to grow a particular food. Scientists calculate
the amount of virtual water embedded in foods as a metric for sustainability.
One way to express virtual water content of foods is to calculate the amount of kilocalories
produced per cubic meter of water used. This allows us to compare different types of food.
The thirstiest food is beef, producing 161 kilocalories per cubic meter of water used. This amount
includes water used to grow the feed, in addition to sanitizing slaughterhouses and barns.
Comparatively, rice yields 2,770 kilocalories per cubic meter of water used.
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How about organic versus non-organic chicken? An organic chicken is more humanely raised and
therefore allowed to walk and clumsily fly around. Hmmm, do you wonder where it gets the
energy to power all those muscles for flight? Oh yes, that’s right, from the feed.
An organic chicken has twice the amount of feed demands than a less active chicken. Of course,
the organic chicken is more humanely raised and all birds should be raised this way. But feed
demands do go up, and we just placed a heavier burden on another part of the chicken production
chain.
[Fox Perspective – Transport]

How a food gets transported must also be factored in. The food miles argument is so simple that
any grade school child can understand. Quite likely, most kids these days have had their first lesson
on local food being more sustainable.
But let’s explore this claim further – as does Michael Carolan. A fruit that is transported thousands
of kilometers from field to fork has more food miles and thus, it is less sustainable than one that is
produced more locally. It is, as he says, practically a truism. Fewer kilometers equates to greater
sustainability. But upon further inquiry, we see that this may not be so.
Let’s consider some fruit grown in Mexico that travelled 6,000 kilometers by truck to your local
grocery store. And let’s compare it to some local alternative produced from a farmer located 40
kilometers from your home.
The Mexican alternative travelled 6,000 km and therefore has 6,000 food kilometers.
That local fruit travelled inside your internal combustion engine car and has 40 food kilometers.
But wait, that truck did not just transport one fruit. It had 200,000 of them. Surely we must
consider the load!
Once the load is considered, those Mexican fruits have 0.03 food kilometers. You then drove 3
kilometers to this grocery store to pick it up for a total of 0.09 food kilometers.
The argument made by Carolan is that food miles are traditionally calculated as vehicle kilometers
regardless of load. It makes more sense to calculate tonnes per kilometer. If you then add to this
argument how the food was produced… the argument of local foods always being better turns to
gelatin.
[Fox Perspective - Preparation]

Preparation is what we do with food at home but here is this new practice of sprouting stuff. This
is what happens when a plant ecologist dabbles in food sustainability.
An ordinary, unsprouted cup of lentils contains 117 kilocalories.
But not these ones. They’ve been sprouted. They contain 21 kilocalories.
That means the developing plant embryo used up the kilocalories on the macronutrients to power
its own growth. Then, it was heat shocked and killed.
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Given that 45 to 65% of our calories should come from healthy carbohydrates, such as legumes, if
we consume sprouted grains and legumes, it begs the question, where should our carbohydrates
come from?
Non-affluent populations are starving. And our affluent society has decided to grow stuff, and then
un-grow it. Is sprouting an unintentional form of food waste? Is a locavore that eats sprouted
pulses the equivalent of an environmentalist jet-setting across the globe in a private jet (think
Leonardo DiCaprio) to promote the abandon of fossil fuels?
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[Lesson 11.3– Sustainable Food Diet and the Canadian Food Guide]
[Food Guides Once Again]

So what might a sustainable diet look like? Here again is our Canadian food guide.
Based on what we learned, the biggest impact we can have on the environment and our health is
to reduce the consumption of meat and substitute it with legumes. When we do eat meat, we
should opt for grass-fed varieties and organic chicken. Furthermore, we should learn to use as
much of the animal as possible.
Given that legumes are a great source of both protein and fiber, we can then reduce the intake of
grains.
We should continue to consume at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day but given the
wickedness of the problems presented, one hesitates to make sweeping generalization regarding
the source of fruits and vegetables.
Finally, a sustainable and health-promoting food guide must rest on the importance of learning
how to cook, using up leftovers and reducing food waste. The money you save per month on your
food bill is the most robust metric for having achieved sustainable practices at home. This requires
a set of skills and cookware. We are back to where we started from.
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[Lesson 11.4– Conclusion]
[Conclusion]
Nutrition and food sustainability get worked out with you in the kitchen. Ladle and pot in hand.
If you’ve learned anything from this course is that nutrition is a dynamic and complex science.
But the science of good nutrition is not a wicked problem and that should be reassuring. While we
may not be able to solve food sustainability just yet, we can make small incremental progress in
our homes.
[Nutrition and Food Sustainability]

We would like to end this course with this quote from Diane Halpern on Critical Thinking in the
21st century. It applies equally to nutrition as it does to food sustainability. “If we cannot think
intelligently about the myriad of issues that confront us, then we are in danger of having all of the
answers, but still not knowing what they mean.”
“The twin abilities of knowing how to learn and knowing how to think clearly about the rapidly
proliferating information that we must select from are the most important intellectual skills for the
21st century.”

Lesson 11 Merged

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Lesson 11 Merged

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BIOL 203 Fundamental Nutrition

Lesson 11 - (Un)Sustainable Diets

[Lesson 11.1– Introduction]

[Sustainability – A Wicked Problem]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Hedgehog Perspective – I=PAT]

[Fox Perspective - Intro]

[Fox Perspective – Production – How and Where Food is Produced]

[Fox Perspective – Production – What is Produced]

[Fox Perspective – Transport]

[Fox Perspective - Preparation]

[Food Guides Once Again]

[Lesson 11.4– Conclusion]

[Nutrition and Food Sustainability]

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