Eating the Earth
November 29, 2024 at 10:22PMThis piece on global food systems’ impacts on health and the environment is made 100% richer by the stunning photography that accompanies it. Bourne takes us through the complexity and risks of our globally interconnected meals, and Steinmetz’s images drive home the scale of the environmental issues and the human cost of being able to buy pineapples year-round in Michigan or Munich—a third of the story is in the captions, so don’t skip ’em
At the risk of sounding like a Facebook post from 2005, this morning for breakfast I had oatmeal from Ireland, topped with a banana from Costa Rica and sugar from Brazil, and coffee composed of beans from “aromatic Ethiopia, earthy Sumatra, lively Colombia, and chocolatey Honduras.” I then fed my dog kibble containing seaweed extract that most likely came from China and fish oil that was probably from Peru.
Old Boomer and I are not alone. Despite decades of admonitions from nutritionists and environmentalists to “eat locally, think globally,” our collective diets are more international than ever. A decade ago, some 80% of the world’s population lived in countries that were net importers of food, and the proportion has only grown since then. By 2050, fully half the world’s people may depend for survival on calories produced oceans away.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/29/eating-the-earth/
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