This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:
What could you do differently?
Well that sounds like a question lifted right off an Oblique Strategies deck if ever I heard one!
I occasionally aspire to something-closer-to-veganism. Given that my vegetarianism (which is nowadays a compromise position1 of “no meat on weekdays, no beef or lamb at all”) comes primarily from a place of environmental concern: a Western meat-eating diet is vastly less-efficient in terms of energy conversion, water usage, and carbon footprint than a vegetarian or vegan diet.
From an environmental perspective, the biggest impact resulting from my diet is almost certainly: dairy products. I’m not even the hugest fan of cheese, but I seem to eat plenty of it, and it’s one of those things that they just don’t seem to be able to make plant-based alternatives to perfectly, yet.
In an ideal world, with more willpower, I’d be mostly-vegan. I’d eat free range eggs produced by my own chickens, because keeping your own chickens offsets the food miles by enough to make them highly-sustainable. I’d eat honey, because honestly anything we can do to encourage more commercial beekeeping is a good thing as human civilisation depends on pollinators. But I’d drop all dairy from my diet.
I suppose I’m not that far off, yet. Maybe this year I can try switching-in a little more vegan “cheese” into the rotation.
Footnotes
1 I missed many meats. But also, I don’t like to be an inconvenience.