Manipulating Global Food Preferences for Promoting Sustainability and Reducing Disaster Risk

Abstract

Our food choices are inextricably and intimately linked to environment, and poor choices are a ready recipe to global disasters driven by virtue of the enormous water and carbon footprint ingrained in the food we eat. Food choices in society are often manipulated by the multi-billion food industry, by the governments through appropriate deliverance of subsidies, and by other policy interventions. This chapter provides an insight into such manipulation and highlights the environmental consequences of the choices that we make on what we eat. The chapter focuses on sustainability aspects of various foods and particularly highlights their water and carbon footprints to deduce how global food choices affect sustainability and how they threaten to engulf the world into numerous disasters brought about by the impact of food on environment. This chapter also explores the role of livestock and its massive footprint on Earth in terms of its pollution trail and its role in the reduction of biodiversity, as the world increasingly opts for meat-based dietary preferences, an industry that has shown consistent growth rate virtually all around the globe. In view of the above, this chapter also suggests the way out by appropriate formulation of policies related to food, by imposing food taxes on environmentally irresponsible foods, and by dissemination of awareness on the issue through modification of educational curricula, etc.