Obesity is a natural state of the body but can have unnatural causes and if we want to save the climate it does matter what we eat.
Let me take you on a thought game to explain you why.
You have buckets. Blue and red buckets. Each bucket takes 10 balls. Red balls only go into the red bucket, blue balls go only into the blue bucket. You can have as many buckets as you want but you win, when you fill at least 1 blue and 1 red bucket.
You now get sacks filled with balls. Each sack is filled with 10 balls. You can have as many as you need to fill your red and blue bucket.
A: The first kind of sacks has 5 red and 5 blue balls. You need 2 sacks to fill 1 red and 1 blue bucket to win.
B: The second kind of sacks has 8 red balls and 2 blue balls. You need 5 sacks to fill 4 red buckets and 1 blue bucket.
The red bucket is the amount of energy your body needs for one day. The blue bucket is the amount of all nutrients your body needs for one day.
The sacks are the food you eat.
A: Case A is a balanced diet. This diet allows you to eat only 1 red and only 1 blue bucket. If you put those buckets on a scale, the scale would be balanced. You only need 2 portions of food in this example.
B: Case B is an unbalanced diet. In order to fill 1 blue bucket you must fill 4 red buckets, too. This means if you want to meet your daily nutritional recommendations, you must overdose on energy. You gain weight but feel healthy and your doctor may not find any nutrient deficiency. On top you have to eat 5 portions of food. 3 more than in the balanced diet.
It does matter what we eat if we want to save our climate because you can’t eat less of an unbalanced diet. You can’t stop eating if you haven’t filled the nutrient bucket.
Why should we eat as little as possible?
That unbalanced diet is very harmful to our planet. It contains too many carbs and animal based protein. All the bread and pasta is made of wheat. All the sweet products are filled with sugar that is made of corn. All the animals are fed with soy.
Wheat, soy and corn are the three most grown food commodities. The agriculture used to grow those is harmful to our soil.
By eating less, we first of all don’t need as many fields to grow those food.
Secondly, farmers have a bigger chance to use regenerative agriculture to grow food. That regenerative agriculture nurtures our soil.
Why is that important for the climate?
Soil is the biggest terrestrial carbon dioxide reservoir we have on the planet. But it is not a renewable resource. We must protect the soil we have.
I believe the first step each of us should take to truly safe the planet, if this is something you are concerned about, is to change the diet into a balanced diet.
Why?
Because we eat at least twice a day, every single day. Everyone wants to eat at least twice a day and we are 7,8 billion people.