Your BMW or your Big Mac?

The cover story of the current US edition of Time magazine is 'The Global Warming Survival Guide: 51 Things You Can Do To Make A Difference.'

Number 18 is entitled 'Skip The Steak' and reads: "Which is responsible for more global warming: your BMW or your Big Mac? Believe it or not it's the burger."

Kudos to Time magazine for highlighting this important fact. It's hard to open a newspaper these days without reading alarming statistics about carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and climate change. But usually the number one cause of all of this is conspicuously absent from the report: the way we eat. Discussions of what individuals can do to tread more lightly on the earth tend to stick to such steps as ditching the car, eschewing air travel, buying organic, buying less and recycling – all very positive, of course. 

But the most effective step of all – indeed the only truly sustainable way to live – is to choose a plant-based diet. Simple as that. We all have to eat, and animal agriculture uses substantially more land, water, grain and fuel than plant agriculture, and creates vastly more pollution. That goes for organic as well as non and it is a difference not of degrees but of multiples. With human population set to top 10 billion shortly after 2050, meat and dairy products are fast becoming wasteful extravagances the planet cannot afford.

As Time magazine reports, a recent University of Chicago study concluded that with a shift to just a vegetarian diet (not even a vegan one) the average person will reduce their carbon footprint by around 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide a year. Trading a standard car for a hybrid, meanwhile, cuts only 1 ton.

The good news is that more and more people are gravitating towards plant-based diets. Just 20 years ago it was considered radical to be vegetarian. Since then, the number of vegetarians has increased year on year to the point that it no longer raises an eyebrow, and it's hard to find a restaurant that does not offer vegetarian dishes.

Over the last five years, the number of vegans has been increasing rapidly, while the number of people eating raw or high-raw diets has gone through the roof. This is not only the healthiest way to nourish yourself and a delicious one at that; nor is it simply the most ethical. It is also the most sustainable. It's plant-based, for starters, and with every meal or snack you choose that is unfired, your carbon footprint shrinks further still.

Even better, it is getting easier and easier to live this way as more and more companies are popping up to offer a whole range of information, products and services that support it.

To think that not so long ago the choice not to eat meat meant putting up with a soggy, grey vegetarian lasagne every time you ate out, while being raw meant being a social outcast. Yet now raw restaurants are popping up everywhere, there is an ever-expanding array of superfoods and raw treats for sale, and a huge selection of events and social occasions catering to this lifestyle. All of which means that it is fun as well as healthy, delicious, ethical and sustainable.

What's not to love about being raw?!!