My Last Post: What I Have Learned

This week I wanted to look back at the last three months of blogging and discuss what I have learned, as this will be my last post. If we start at the first post, I wanted to know about the following things:
  • The impact the food system has on the environment
  • How the food system can be improved
  • What the future of food production might look like
Photos from previous posts: Bomb, Lab burger, Fruit, Obama, Turkey, Burger, Cow, Tiger, Scientist, Future of Food 

I think I have achieved this. In my environmental impacts post I learned how our current food system threatens biodiversity, is a major contributor to climate change, lacks genetic diversity (and how this could be dangerous), uses almost half of the worlds habitable land, is a leading source of pollution, and uses 70% of freshwater. A highlight of that post was learning and then describing what eutrophication was – I felt like a real geography student! My Cowspiracy post also focused on the environmental impact of food production. Watching that documentary helped me learn more about this topic, but also to be wary of statistics as they can be twisted to suit an argument (for example they claim livestock and their products to be responsible for 51% of global greenhouse emissions, whereas most people agree that agriculture is responsible for just 18%).

In my 'Raising Twenty Billion' posts I explored how the food system could be improved, focusing on reducing meat consumption. I learned how beneficial vegetarian and vegan diets could be, but then accounted for the environmental, health, economic and cultural problems that would arise with a shift towards meatless diets. This was one of my favourite posts as I got to evaluate the issue looking at a variety of sources and opinions, and then, in part two, I got to promote solutions. In my video posts I also looked at how our diets could change to be more environmentally friendly, by simply switching out beef for beans or more generally making changes.

Finally, in my last two posts I explored the future of food production. In doing research for these posts I came across so many initiatives and ideas for the future which gave me hope, and so was a great way for me to end my blogging. If I had more time I would do so many more things, for example I would look at food packaging more deeply, explore the history of food production, and have more fun posts on reviews of events (such as this one coming up), restaurants (such as this one I highly recommend) and maybe recipes too. Thank you so much for reading my posts, I hope they have helped you think more about what you eat. Have a great 2018!

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