I gave up meat every Lent for at least a decade before finally deciding that I could (mostly) handle doing that year-round. I then became a full-time pescatarian (vegetarian who eats fish) for 15 years until I saw the documentary Cowspiracy in 2014 and decided that it was time to give up eating all animal products to reduce my personal carbon footprint. You see, I had bought into the corporate myth that we are individually responsible for saving the planet.
I still follow a plant-based lifestyle, but I no longer feel that what I am doing will save the planet. Instead, I feel that eating this way is what I can do personally to heed God’s call to “love your neighbor as yourself,” with those neighbors being the meat and dairy animals I was consuming from the factory farming system, the human neighbors who work in those same conditions, and the neighbors (human and animal) who live downstream of the factory farms that were leaching fertilizers and animal waste into the water system, turning vast swaths of the marine ecosystem into dead zones. Eating plant-based is an acknowledgement of what I was contributing to species extinction, deforestation, ocean acidification, animal injustice, and worker injustice, as a person who ate meat and dairy products. It was a decision I made because my faith called me to no longer eat that way.
Because we all must eat, and most of us can choose what we will put in our mouths, our food choices are some of the most effective ways we can have a positive impact on climate. In addition to choices about eating plants or animals, there are things to consider such as “what ecosystems are being harmed by production of this food (plant or animal)?”, and “how far has my food traveled and what amount of greenhouse gas emissions has that caused?”, and “what is the effect on the climate from all of my food waste?”
Through this decades long journey of becoming more intentional about what I eat, I have discovered wonderful new ways to cook, using a far vaster array of foods and seasonings, and ways to share about my food decisions (hopefully, without being obnoxious about it!), while deepening my commitment to always act for justice for all of creation. And that’s all from thinking about food!
This Lent, Gulf Coast Creation Care is inviting people to participate in a 40-day (plus Sundays) look at Food, Faith and Climate. The first 4 days will be an overview, with an emphasis on why this should matter to us as people of faith. Week 1 will offer resources that provide an overview of the issues involved in choosing the foods we eat. Week 2 will cover food waste, which globally generates the highest amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are within the control of us as individuals. In Week 3 we will take a look at issues surrounding plant-based eating, the 2nd most important thing that we can choose to do as individuals to rein in climate change. Week 4 will offer a chance to consider global food issues such as worldwide hunger. Week 5 will cover selected issues of food justice, and we will finish in Holy Week with a penitential look at some of the most crucial issues that are affected by our food choices, such as biodiversity loss.
You are invited to join us in this journey by sending an email to info@gulfcoastcreationcare.org and signing up for your daily meditation. You may also download a copy of the calendar to use at your own pace.
The goal of this year’s Lenten focus is to help us stop making our food choices in an arms-length manner, and instead to become conscious of the effects that they have...morally, from a position of doing what is just for all of creation, and to give us a sense of how interconnected we truly are with the parts of creation that we think of as our food.