Do you know enough about the consequences to the planet or yourself when choosing the food you eat? Here are a few things to contemplate before deciding your next meal.

Here are a few of the consequences to the Earth from food choices?

• Rearing and feeding livestock to produce meat and dairy food products requires the use of a tremendous amount of arable cropland, up to 40%, while creating water and soil pollution and, when free range, devastation to habitats, biodiversity, and watersheds. Livestock are responsible for deforestation and major contributors to anthropogenic green house gas emissions-41% of CO2, 37% of methane, and 65% of nitrous oxide-not only in life, but after slaughter, requiring refrigeration, adding further emissions and energy drain on an already overloaded grid. Raising livestock also requires a buttload of water. One quarter pound burger patty equating to the use of 600 gallons of freshwater, a resource already in serious decline. And globally, of more than 80 billion land animals, and trillions of aquatic, harvested and slaughtered each year for food, as much as one quarter ends up as food waste.
• Oil crops occupy nearly 550 million hectares of land, roughly 37% of agricultural land; land subjected to monoculture biodiversity loss and species displacement, water fouling and depletion. Olive oil owns the largest water footprint, requiring 5,300 gallons of water to grow and produce one gallon of oil.
• Sugarcane currently covers approximately 28 million hectares of agricultural land and will require 50% more to meet demands in the next 25 years. Aside from declining precipitation for cultivation, to process just one teaspoon of cane sugar requires an additional nine gallons of potable water, equalling the use of 90 gallons of water to sweeten 12 ounces of soda.
• Meeting the water needs of corn plants, 2,300 gallons to produce one bushel of corn, is similar to that of sugarcane, although relying heavily on irrigation from ground water extraction, and suffering major losses to evaporation and transpiration. Processing High Fructose Corn Sweetener also requires major amounts of water usage, retaining 25% water by volume when finished, increasing the environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels for packaging and transport.
• Beyond ecosystem vulnerabilities, arable land and water usage, and the negative effects on human health, artificial sweeteners have ecotoxicological contributions: never degrading and poisoning or polluting everything they contact.

Do you know the consequences to your health from your food choices?

• Meat consumption increases diabetes risk by 50%. Consuming dairy products (measured by IGF-1 levels) increases cancer probability by 48%. Long term high fat animal protein diets increase risk of renal, liver, and cardiovascular diseases, and attribute to as much as 80%, breast, bowel, and prostate cancer.
• A diet containing too many chemically processed omega-6 rich seed oils can push you down a path leading to heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline, metabolic syndrome, arthritis, and type 2 diabetes...to name a few.  
• According to National Public Radio-"You can't outrun a bad diet. Obesity is 100% what is on the plate". Yet more than half of Americans are overweight and 85% of plates are 75% full of processed food.

When you make choices for food, it doesn't end with your tastebuds. You are also choosing your regard to your health and that of the planet. Meat, dairy, eggs, seed oils, and sweeteners are non-essential to human health. Their use can be reduced to historical lows, allowing a future with essential food and the potential of making further history.

If you are still waiting to know the science before delving into a new diet, lifestyle, supplement, or medication, grab your device and ask your favorite AI. Remember, you must look beyond commercial interests and those sites receiving commercial funding, understanding also the premise of science: inherent with every discovery is the need to know more. But today, we undoubtedly know enough to move beyond many of our self-destructive behviors.

                                       - James, Scientist