As a recent vegetarian of about two months ago, reading Diet for a Hot Planet by Anna Lappé has helped to solidify my decision in becoming a vegetarian and has all around helped me to dig deeper in thought about the food I consume. Anna Lappé touches upon several aspects of the food industry as a whole with the intent that the reader may not know that the food industry in its entirety has a larger effect on global warming than the entire transportation industry combined. She brings to the attention of the reader everything that goes into producing food; manufacturing of pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals, distribution of these chemicals, equipment and machinery used in on the farms, the multitude of feed crops for industrial scale farming that is needed to feed cattle and poultry, the transportation of feed crops, the transportation of meat and produce from country to country, etc.. Within her book, she also discusses several other issues with the food industry.
One thing in particular that I found most attention-grabbing in Lappé’s work was her “How to” section on deciphering whether or not large scale corporations are advertising their recent “green” initiatives for publicity and popularity or out of a sincere effort to reduce their carbon emissions. The following is a brief overview of what she has to say on this matter and questions to consider.
- Are claims relevant? It is easy to take credit for something that does not require any effort such as claiming to be “CFC free” when CFC’s have already been phased out or claiming to be “GMO free” when ingredients may not even be available in modified forms.
- Are claims vague? Terms such as “all-natural”, “chemical-free”, “eco”, and “green” have no true official definition.
- Are claims a decoy? Companies are filled with hidden trade-offs. Example: Processed foods companies claiming to contain only organic ingredients while they are produced in toxic plastics.
- What tense are commitments made in? Many companies use forward-looking language such as “may”, “might”, “intend”, or “expect” that actually take them off the hook of having to follow through with their promises.
- Is the commitment generous or a gimmick? Companies that say they donate percentages of their profits have “total giving limits” in the fine print. Consumers may think that some of their purchase is helping a cause elsewhere, when the total giving limit has already been met and none of your purchase goes to the cause.
- Does the context trump the commitment? Coca-Cola uses about 2.5 liters of water to produce 1 liter of beverage but they state they are “working to get that number down”. Even with a 25% reduction, they are still wasting to produce. The bigger issue here, millions of people in our world lack access to safe drinking water.
See also www.stopgreenwash.org, www.greenerchoices.org, and www.futerra.co.uk for more information on corporate industry greenwashing.
Lappé, Anna. Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2010. Print.