FW: To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

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October 23, 2009

By Degrees

 

To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

 

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

 

STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal,

Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on

the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.”

“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.

But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide

emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat

pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and

restaurant menus around the country.

People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing

one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of

climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away

with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.

“We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,”

said Ulf Bohman, head of the Nutrition Department at the Swedish

National Food Administration, which was given the task last year of

creating new food guidelines

giving equal weight to climate and health. “We’re used to thinking

about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”

Some of the proposed new dietary guidelines, released over the

summer, may seem startling to the uninitiated. They recommend that

Swedes favor carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. (Unlike

carrots, the latter two must be grown in heated greenhouses here,

consuming energy.)

They are not counseled to eat more fish, despite the health benefits, because Europe’s stocks are depleted.

And somewhat less surprisingly, they are advised to substitute beans

or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions

associated with raising cattle.

“For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr. Bohman acknowledged. “You are

getting environmental advice that you have to coordinate with, ‘How can

I eat healthier?’ ”

Many Swedish diners say it is just too much to ask. “I wish I could

say that the information has made me change what I eat, but it hasn’t,”

said Richard Lalander, 27, who was eating a Max hamburger (1.7

kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions) in the shadow of a menu board

revealing that a chicken sandwich (0.4 kilograms) would have been

better for the planet.

Yet if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, some experts say, Sweden

could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 percent. An

estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in

industrialized nations can be traced to the food they eat, according to

recent research here. And foods vary enormously in the emissions

released in their production.

While today’s American or European shoppers may be well versed in

checking for nutrients, calories or fat content, they often have little

idea of whether eating tomatoes, chicken or rice is good or bad for the

climate.

Complicating matters, the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.

Earlier studies of food emissions focused on the high environmental

costs of transporting food and raising cattle. But more nuanced

research shows that the emissions depend on many factors, including the

type of soil used to grow the food and whether a dairy farmer uses

local rapeseed or imported soy for cattle feed.

Business groups, farming cooperatives and organic labeling programs

as well as the government have gamely come up with coordinated ways to

identify food choices.

Max, Sweden’s largest homegrown chain of burger restaurants, now puts emissions calculations next to each item on its menu boards. Lantmannen,

Sweden’s largest farming group, has begun placing precise labels on

some categories of foods in grocery stores, including chicken, oatmeal,

barley and pasta.

Consumers who pay attention may learn that emissions generated by

growing the nation’s most popular grain, rice, are two to three times

those of little-used barley, for example.

Some producers argue that the new programs are overly complex and

threaten profits. The dietary recommendations, which are being

circulated for comment not just in Sweden but across the European Union, have been attacked by the Continent’s meat industry, Norwegian salmon farmers and Malaysian palm oil growers, to name a few.

“This is trial and error; we’re still trying to see what works,” Mr. Bohman said.

Next year, KRAV,

Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring

farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display

its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can

no longer be called organic.

Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who

are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie,

manager of climate issues for KRAV.

For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil

on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing

peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label,

they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.

Next year KRAV will require hothouses to use biofuels

for heating. Dairy farms will have to obtain at least 70 percent of the

food for their herds locally; many previously imported cheap soy from

Brazil, generating transport emissions and damaging the rain forest as trees were cleared to make way for farmland.

The Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national

environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions.

Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions —

two metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.

The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more

toward chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering

emissions generally could have an enormous impact.

Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce

emissions. It has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for

electricity by 2020 and cars that run on gasoline by 2030.

To arrive at numbers for their company’s first carbon dioxide

labels, scientists at Lantmannen analyzed life cycles of 20 products.

These take into account emissions generated by fertilizer, fuel for

harvesting machinery, packaging and transport.

They decided to examine one representative product in each category

— say, pasta — rather than performing analyses for fusilli versus

penne, or one brand versus another. “Every climate declaration is

hugely time-intensive,” said Claes Johansson, Lantmannen’s director of

sustainability.

A new generation of Swedish business leaders is stepping up to the

climate challenge. Richard Bergfors, president of Max, his family’s

burger chain, voluntarily hired a consultant to calculate its carbon

footprint; 75 percent was created by its meat.

“We decided to be honest and put it all out there and say we’ll do

everything we can to reduce,” said Mr. Bergfors, 40. In addition to

putting emissions data

on the menu, Max eliminated boxes from its children’s meals, installed

low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.

Since the emissions counts started appearing on the menu, sales of

climate-friendly items have risen 20 percent. Still, plenty of people

head to a burger restaurant lusting only for a burger.

Kristian Eriksson, 26, an information technology specialist, looked

embarrassed when asked about the burger he was eating at an outdoor

table.

“You feel guilty picking red meat,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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