food life story

I read something today that opened my mind (sort of blew my mind, actually) to something that I had never thought of, relating to the PFIC. The production of junk food, fast food, ‘nutrient-poor discretionary food’… what ever you want to call the processed food that has become such a major part of most consumers diets… has a huge environmental impact!

These quotes are from an article* about a 2021 study (published in the journal Current Nutrition Reports), which reviewed 20 studies that had evaluated the environmental impact of food consumption in Australia and New Zealand…

“The foods we choose to consume can have a harmful impact on the environment. Both animal products and processed foods require additional cropland, water, packaging, and other inputs. In New Zealand, livestock and processing meat, seafood, and eggs account for 35 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from foods, while processed foods such as pastries and ice cream account for 34 percent… Thirty percent of Australia’s food related greenhouse gases came from avoidable energy-rich and nutrient-poor discretionary foods, such as sugar-sweetened drinks, pastries, confectionary foods, processed meat, and alcohol.”

And my reaction was ‘Of course! Duh!’ All those delicious chemicals that I was talking about yesterday are escaping from the factories of the PFIC. And the packaging… what a waste of natural resources to wrap those products! Products that do not provide nutrition and are in fact making generation after generation of human beings ill. And please don’t mistake me here, I am not talking about the oft decried ‘obesity epidemic’. Crap ‘food’ produced by the PFIC is hurting everyone, skinny or fat. It is a widely ignored health issue for people of all body types.

I almost wish that I could say it’s occurring in the US and other (so called) developed nations, but an appetite for soda, chips and other unhealthy ‘foods’ has spread across the globe. The profits of the PFIC and it’s adjunct, the advertising industry, have been growing since the mid-20th century and they have no plans to slow down. New chemical-based edibles are being developed. One can only hope that more studies will reveal the damage to the environment and to our bodies the PFIC is causing.

* Junk Food Almost as Bad as Meat for the Environment by John Douillard