Idea #7: Don’t eat food from cows

Back in 2017, this article from The Atlantic made quite an impression on me: If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef. The upshot is that beef cultivation is so energy-inefficient that this single, small dietary change would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by a tenth. Ten percent! Even if our transportation habits don’t change at all! Read the article; it’s a good one.

The reasons for this are the methane released by enteric fermentation and the fact that they’re just so darn big (exacerbating the inefficiencies inherent in growing food for livestock that could just as well be fed directly to humans). Hence, drinking cow milk has many of the same problems. In my humble opinion, soy and almond milk taste better anyway.

In future blog posts, I hope to talk about some easy ways of cooking and eating beans. My favorite legumes are lentils, chickpeas (which are easy to soak and cook in a rice cooker) and canned refried beans (which don’t need to be cooked at all).