Our dietary choices are made within a complex, powerful and unsustainable food system, which contributes to rising problems of food insecurity, malnutrition, chronic disease, climate change, loss of biodiversity and unfair food trade practices. The food choices, amidst the global pandemic, has also ousted sustainable eating and has become more important than ever for multiple reasons. The pandemic had taught us even more the importance of sustainable nutrition as food supply and demand were greatly affected. There was a disruption in availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability with regards to sufficient and nutritionally adequate food to the population. On the other hand, there is also the issue of climate change which impacts the environment to meet food supply and demand to feed everyone on earth. The agricultural sector produces about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). Amongst them is the meat production, especially beef which is an important contributor.
IMU Nutrition programme prepares its graduates to address the climate change through healthy diets. As part of their studies, they are taught about sustainable nutrition and encouraged to propose solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). The students calculated their respective carbon footprints for a period of 7 days and were astonished at their own contribution to GHGE. Additionally, they proposed solutions for improvement in carbon footprint reduction through sustainable diets.
IMU Nutrition NT119 students shared their learnings from their project.
