fábulas sustentáveis

this is a campaign to help consumers from a Swedish supermarket! if retailers care, we can make it, because as they say  we need to help each other .

If it is need to find arguments why we should eat less meat, here there are two good ones: Firstly, current rates of meat consumption in wealthy countries – particularly red meat – are unsustainable under any circumstances, and must be reduced due to the burgeoning health and environmental impacts.  Secondly, industrial feedlot production yields too many negative outcomes on too many fronts to be justifiable. These systems require large quantities of imported feed crops, thereby displacing potential food production: an area the size of France is required for the EU to import its feed requirements. Meanwhile, they depend on extensive use of antibiotics, entail major GHG emissions (both in the production area and in the shipping of inputs and outputs to far-off locations), cause localized environmental degradation due to the huge waste they produce, and often subject animals to stressful and inhumane conditions. Industrial feedlots cannot conceivably be part of the sustainable fo...

The water to produce 110 grams of meat is equivalent to 26 showers. This campaign wants to show that by skipping showers for every hamburger you eat, you can offset the water used to produce it. Everything has a trade-off and it is difficult to weight things all the time we need to make decisions. Moreover is difficult to quantify the environmental costs, which can be very different depending on the context. I try to keep having shower and eating less meat. But what I would like to skip is flying (even though it is not the same comparison because it is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions). But this year I already flew one time to South America, for vacation, and two times in Europe, for work reasons. I cannot eat more meat until the end of this year or maybe no more showers!

There are new dietary guidelines  to Sweden, which include not only the health concerns, but also the environment. It has a ‘Sustainable big picture’ stressing the need to focus not just on individual nutrients but to take a holistic view that also includes physical activity and environmental concerns. And what do they say about fish consumption? Eat fish and shellfish two to three times a  week.  Vary your intake of fatty and low-fat  varieties, and choose ecolabelled seafood. In summary, the advice is: Eat fish and shellfish two to three times a week – vary the type of fish and look for products with sustainability labels  Exercise at least 30 minutes every day  Switch to whole grain for pasta, bread and cereals – all cereals have low carbon footprints and pesticide use is low  Choose healthy fats like rape seed oil – butter has a higher carbon footprint than vegetable oil  Choose low fat, un-sweetened dairy products fortified...

some days ago I went to a conference about "Sustainable consumption - a green attitude" where stakeholders from retailing said that Portuguese consumers have good access to organic food and wish to consume it more. even though it is much better comparing to some years ago, I was expecting to hear new ideas and projects to improve what companies give now to help consumers in a sustainable consumption. a simple initiative was made by a Swedish supply chain to aware about the issue. the organic effect was tested to find what happens when a family that usually does not eat organic food suddenly starts to do it. there are many issues that supply chains can approach as for example giving alternatives and informing correctly about the production features of the different products sold. even though it is important, not only the price is the main decision factor, especially when the difference to buy organic can be 0,50 €. otherwise nobody would recycle since it d...

Maybe not! Portuguese know a lot about seafood comparing to other countries but that does not make them more conscious about the environmental consequences of their choices. Is it good or bad? In my opinion, we can only say it is different. Each country has a tradition on how to prepare seafood and that influences the way people eat and purchase seafood. The important thing is to find the differences and work based on them to change habits. In North European countries people are more willing to buy certified seafood. That is very good but in Portugal does not work in that way. Nevertheless Portuguese have habits that can be considered very sustainable, as for example the joy of eating small pelagic fish (e.g. sardines). If more people in the world would eat small fish (e.g. anchovy), we could use more fish as food instead of using to feed other animals (e.g. salmon) and more animal protein would be available directly to people. Whatever one can find through numbers and st...

This quantitative consumer study of 18,000 consumers in a total of 18 countries (14 in 2008, 17 in 2009 through 2012) asked about such behavior as energy use and conservation, transportation choices, food sources, the relative use of green products versus conventional products, attitudes toward the environment and sustainability, and knowledge of environmental issues.   Overall, we find that although environmental concerns have widely increased since 2012 and that climate change is presenting an increasingly felt threat to consumers, the pace and scale of uptake of sustainable consumption have remained too little over the past six years.  Top-scoring consumers of the 2014 Greendex study are in the developing economies of India and China, in descending order, followed by consumers in South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina. Indian and Chinese consumers also scored highest in 2012. American consumers’ behavior still ranks as the least sustainable of all countries surveyed sinc...

Just two generations ago, preparing meals was as much a part of life as eating. Now we’ve given up what is perhaps our best excuse to get together and spend time with the people we love—mealtime—and someone else stands at the stove. We’re either watching cooks on TV like we would a spectator sport or grabbing grub, bagged, and eating it alone and on the go. ... Because not cooking is a big mistake—and it’s one that’s costing us money, good times, control, serenity and, yes, vastly better health. I really agree that it is good to cook. When I cook, I learn how to buy food, where it comes from, and how to prepare it. Each time I eat, I understand all the work that is behind my meal and the cost of the food produced to feed me. In the same way, the last book of Michael Pollan, Cooked , talks about the importance of cooking for healthy and more sustainable food habits: The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching.  Relying upon corporations to process our food me...

Maybe not... As  Michael Pollan says: Eat Food, not too much, mostly plants. There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding, and for many reasons such studies are unlikely.  ... A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches.

Por um capricho gastronómico, aquele polvo, um molusco cefalópode como tantos outros, ascendeu ao jet-set internacional. Do momento em que o pescaram até ao instante em que foi ao forno, à lagareiro, percorreu pelo menos três países e experimentou quase todos os modos possíveis de transporte. ... Foram as inscrições no rótulo que me despertaram para o disparate que fizera. O bicho vinha da zona FAO 34, uma das grandes áreas de pesca em que a burocracia das Nações Unidas repartiu os oceanos. Começa no estuário do rio Congo e vai até ao estreito de Gibraltar. Possivelmente o polvo foi capturado nas águas do Marrocos ou do Senegal, por uma embarcação com certeza espanhola. Ou seja, nem sequer era português.  Um bicho globe-trotter como aquele, ainda por cima congelado, não existe sem uma factura energética incomportável, para a qual eu contribuí com uma grande parcela.  Fraca compensação é dizer que a iguaria, uma vez assada, estava uma delícia. Todo o episódio foi um desast...

It is becoming a big challenge to feed cities, where most of the world population lives nowadays. Cities have lots of people that need lots of food. Even tough there is not so much food produced in the cities. Initiatives like this in Oxford can work at the local level to help people to engage in more sustainable choices. The aim of Good Food Oxford is to identify and catalyse actions by individuals and organisations that will measurably reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with Oxford’s food system while promoting environmental sustainability, social inclusion, health, wellbeing, the local economy and a thriving food culture.

The Guardian tracked how some of the world's big supermakets are using suppliers relying on slave labour to put cheap prawns on their shelves. Thai 'ghost ships' enslave, brutalise and even kill workers are linked to global shrimp supply chain. Thailand exports around 500,000 tonnes of shrimps every year. It is one of the biggest exporters in the world. From the total production, 10% are commercialized by the company CPFoods, a main source of shrimps in UK and USA supermarkets. Globalization brings seafood from everywhere to our plates. Nevertheless each of us is responsible for what we put in the plate. People die because of shrimps! Insane business. Here the story in Portuguese.

Fish tales is a company from The Netherlands that sells sustainable seafood. The interesting thing is that they do not only have a MSC certification, they also promote the fishery in videos and the producers in the packages.   It seems that it is good business to tell the story behind the fish. The responsible, Bart van Olphen, a chef and the author, says: What makes seafood stories so special?  You won’t be able to easily find a nice story behind every product.  Highly educated marketing managers and communications directors are needed to bring out stories people hopefully pick up.  This is the reason why I am so happy to be active in the seafood business: because fish is the only product we still consume from the wild, it leads directly to many great stories, beautiful scenery and people.  Communicating seafood is the easiest job to do; you just build a bridge between producers and consumers and tell the real story in as transparent a way as possi...

When I talked to fisherman from the sardine fishery, sometimes they mention their preoccupation about the sardine price in relation to chicken. They said that chicken was getting continuously a lower price at the stores, and that it was difficult to compete with it and make people to buy sardines. But... Can we compare both productions systems? Moreover, Can we compare the quality of protein and animal welfare of both foods? Here it is a very interesting  study  about Life Cycle Assessment of broiler chicken production in Portugal. It is based in data from Portugal and applied to the Portuguese food consumption. In Portugal, 75% of chicken meat consumed is  broiler chicken  and it is the most consumed meat in the country.  When comparing the global warming potential (GWP) of chicken production systems with those of pork and beef production systems, considering a functional unit based on the same protein supply (168.4 g), the production of broiler ...

To see this TED talk at this stage of my PhD thesis, mostly writing and re-writing, is very exciting. Someone has the same thoughts as me? Great! Or did I reach the same thoughts as someone working with fish? Exactly! We just have found the same evidences. Anyway, I have a second point that I would like to add: Eat sustainable seafood, save the oceans. It is not just about the way we fish, it is also the way we eat. So now... I just need to write a few pages, based on bibliography, using the best research references I can find, with the most important facts about the issue, in the simplest words, not too long, understandable, and in good english, which is named a PhD thesis...to state: We need to preserve the oceans to feed the world. But we need to eat sustainable seafood to save the oceans.

One read this book , first published in 1971, and it is difficult to believe that people diets will improve in the future. Can you imagine, in the 70s!???...I was not even born! I do not even say that everybody needs to have a perfect diet or that we all need to be vegetarian. I'm not vegetarian and live good with that decision just by the fact that I eat meat very seldom. And with the time that I have been doing vegetarian meals, I want less and less to cook meat. There are a few points in the book that are very simple to explain: 1.  Hunger is human made. The food production system takes abundant grain, which hungry people cannot afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for.  But I did not fully appreciate that our production system not only reduces abundance but actually mines the very resources on which our future food security rests. How is it possible that more and more grain is used to produce meat when at least a quarter of the worl...

This Green stories  made my day. They are in Sweden but suddenly they visit my favourite place in Portugal, Portinho da Arrábida! They are nice people, make good and healthy food and they are happy. * Such an inspiring story. * I want to make clear that I'm not a green person... ...even though I'm becoming more green and happy with the time.  But my point is for environmental reasons. People should reduce meat and fish consumption. If we could have vegetarian meals once in a week, it would make a big difference multiplied per millions. It is much about learning to find and cook green things. And feel happy with that choice :)    

We are what we eat. The world is also what we eat. And food is a tool to shape the world.