Page 3280 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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(ii) supporting increased school food gardens and provision of kitchen space for preparation and education about food grown on site; and
(iii) requiring all school canteens to provide plant-based food options for students;
(d) updating the health promotion programs including Healthier Choices Canberra, Healthy Food and Drink Choices Policy, ACT Health Promotion Grants Program, and Healthy Children and Young People to better support plant-based foods and include environmental and animal welfare considerations;
(e) Canberra Health Services changing the “default meal” in hospitals to be plant-based (so that patients who do not choose a specific meal receive a plant-based meal);
(f) supporting local food production by increased support for community gardens and food forests and considering planting fruit and nut trees on public land;
(g) where people are in the custody of the ACT Government, such as Dhulwa, Alexander Maconochie Centre and Bimberi, increase the amount of plant-based meals offered, and support residents to learn how to prepare inexpensive and healthy meals; and
(h) reporting back to the Assembly on progress on the above by the last sitting day in June 2020.
First off, a bit of terminology: plant-based food is food that is made from plants. It can be part of all human diets. Vegan diets have only plant-based foods while vegetarian diets include dairy products and eggs as well as plant-based foods.
The research from Roy Morgan shows that 2.5 million people—that is, 12 per cent of the Australian population—are now eating all or almost all vegetarian food. There are lots of reasons to eat less meat, dairy and eggs. For me, it is the impact on our environment that is most important, and livestock farming has a big environmental footprint.
Scientists say that the world must now start reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and reach net zero by the middle of this century to have any chance of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius. A recent report last week from the inter-governmental panel on climate change, which focused on climate change and land use, shows how agriculture, deforestation and other human impacts on the land are dramatically worsening climate change.
“A vegan diet is probably the biggest single way to reduce your impact on planet earth, not just greenhouse gases,” says Professor Joseph Poore from the University of Oxford in the UK, who led research published last year into the environmental impact of livestock. This research shows that, without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by 75 per cent and still feed all of us.
There is a huge variation between different food producers but, as a global average, to produce one kilogram of beef requires 25 kilograms of grain to feed that animal. Of course, that grain could directly feed humans. Growing animals is an inefficient way
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