New Research to Help You Choose Eco-Friendly Foods | SciShow News

The environmental impact of the foods we eat can be tricky to track. But now, researchers in the UK have developed a system to estimate the impact of 57,000 food products in the UK and Ireland! And we are gaining insights into the effects of quitting smoking and drinking simultaneously.
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[NomadUniverse]

Packaging should have been taken into account. No point scoring soft drink and soda as low impact when it's packaged in one of the most harmful materials.

[Herio]

The biggest hurdle I heard from colleagues about buying/keeping healthy food were problem in deciding which product is worth. I know it's not about finding environment friendly food but idea is basically the same. The lack of instant, reliable knowledge is the problem. People are willing to help planet but if the choice requires too much sacrifice or brain power they will drift to their previous choices. Lists like this should be government curated.

[thebigdawg]

The correlation between stopping smoking and stopping drinking is obvious. I stopped smoking 11 years ago. I also stopped drinking because a drink made me want a cigarette. Jump ahead ten years and I do drink socially again but I do not drink any of the beverages I typically had while smoking. So no wine, bourbon or bock beer. Now days it would be rum drinks and lagers. And yes, even after ten years of not smoking bourbon makes me crave a cigarette.

[UdderlyEvelyn]

While it isn't nothing to change personal habits we have to always remember that companies are responsible for much of the harm and most of it is deliberately obscured or marketed/labeled in sneaky ways, sometimes even hiding slave labor and known-dangerous farming practices that you'll probably never figure out they're using. By all means change what you can but push for systemic change too!

[why_though]

2:50 Not sure how their methodology arrived at the conclusion that Cheese and Beef are less nutritious than Ready Meals, so as a professional I must respectfully disagree with their findings or at least point out that the graph is horribly deceiving.

[jurakarok]

2:48 Seeing chips and onion rings listed as the most nutritious of foods has me skeptical. Also humored.

[InnocuousRemark]

If the scale is by weight, then dry food is going to score way higher than wet food. That's why jerky is at the top. It would have been a good idea to also include a score based on 100g of protein, and 100 calories. A vegetable soup that's almost entirely water might seem good for the planet until you realize you need fifty times as much of that as you do beef jerky to get the same amount of protein.

[turtlellama]

I love SciShow's dedication to treat PNAS like an initialism instead of the acronym it is.

[danr]

Also very important, don't waist food.

[popcorn]

One issue I have with "land usage" counting against animal agriculture is that many times, most times, the land used to graze livestock is not suitable to grow food-crops(Especially fruits and some veggies). Whether that is due to soil conditions, topography affecting the ability of machinery to till, plant and harvest, or climate. Especially here in the US. There is also a lot of work being done with regenerative agriculture- using new pasture management and animal management to improve soil quality and bring back native flora. Animal agriculture can also have a lower impact on local fauna because grazing animals can live among native wildlife and those habitats don't have to be clear cut or destroyed to cultivate crops.

Another point is that a lot of our food waste is "recycled" back into the food chain through animal agriculture- we can feed cows and other animals crop by products (like soybean hulls, cotton seeds, etc). So calories that would have otherwise been wasted are given to animals who turn it into milk and meat. Not to mention, a lot of human food crops are fertilized with manure from animal agriculture. Without that natural fertilizer, crop farmers would have to rely more on synthetic fertilizers.

The parameters of this study seem to really skew the "impact" against animal agriculture- but it is difficult to account for all the nuance. The sectors of agriculture don't exist in a vacuum but I feel like a lot of times those connections are ignored in these kinds of studies.

[KayozKong]

That food story was full of alarm bells. Some criticize that due to its (nutriscore) methodological limitations, the system may promote highly processed foods of low nutritional value, while devaluing natural, organic and regional products. The system is not intended as a tool for comparing the nutritional value of products from different categories.

[commmander]

Hopefully someday we can dream of a regenerative world rather than just zero impact.

[TedsHoldOver]

How about an Eco-score for wild harvest (aka Hunting)? My carbon footprint is...whatever it takes to make an arrow.

[eskimo]

That graph is utterly ridiculous! why is milk the same as an egg?!

[WhalerSailor]

Are we going off the same people that said Frosted Flakes and lucky charms are better than eggs?

[SanatieFyre]

How are sodas not that bad for the environment? two different kinds of plastic which makes it difficult to recycle, plastic waste out the wazoo, water use, chemical run off..that surprises me.

[wolfsoda]

Wow these comments are...something. I'd rather talk about the fact that the chart at 2:49 has onion rings placed in the most nutritious section?!

[scottanastasi]

@SciShow Is it also possible that those people willing to change their habits saw their drinking activities as a time that they would normally smoke and so avoided drinking to avoid wanting to smoke?
Just a thought as an ex-smoker. Thanks for the amazing work, as always.

[jourdansarpy]

I didn't use any medication to quit smoking and my alcohol consumption greatly diminished. Part of that was because I had to stop going to bars so often cuz there is a huge smoker culture there and I didn't want to get caught up in peer pressure.

[EinZweid]

I'm really concerned about the fact that the study didn't account for transport or processing. I eat a decent amount of tvp in my regular diet which is produced and shipped in/from south Asia.