Reducing food's carbon footprint

Food providers are taking notice of global warming. (courtesy Bon Appetit management co.)

For such a simple pleasure, cheeseburgers yield such a mess of problems.

How could you know, though? Beef doesn't come with a warning label, detailing the many environmental crimes it commits on its way to the table, including a substantial carbon footprint. And cheese likely boasts an image of a family farm on its package, not the rising seas of global climate change.

As the eat-local food movement continues to grow, be prepared to see more of its close cousin, the low-carbon diet: An eating plan that seeks to limit high-impact foods like beef and cheese in an effort to lower overall carbon emissions. Hungry yet?

For example, beginning on Earth Day next Tuesday, Bon Appetit Management Company, a national food service contractor that serves 80 million meals a year, will reduce its carbon emissions by 25 percent.

It will cut beef and cheese purchases by at least 25 percent and commit to buying only those meats raised in North America; it will stop purchasing any air freighted seafood and buy only local or frozen-at-sea fish; push for composting and less food waste; and stop using any imported water. Ciao San Pellegrino.

Bon Appetit serves four local locations, including the kitchens of MIT and Lesley University in Cambridge, Emmanuel College in Boston, and Cisco Systems in Boxborough. A few years ago, Bon Appetit made a push to increase its purchases of food from within 150 miles of each kitchen by 25 percent and has since spent $55 million locally. But local does not always equal low carbon, and the push is on again.

Emmanuel College was one of the test accounts for the low-carbon diet. It is trying to make an impact in little ways. There are no more tropical fruits available in the cafeterias.

"The more the students know about it," says Kelly McDonald, Bon Appetit's manager at Emmanuel, "the more it's not a big deal to them."

Efforts like these are happening independently as well. Chef Peter Davis of Henrietta's Table at the Charles Hotel sources much of his food locally. At first it was because of flavor, but now Davis is ahead of the curve.

Food was never an issue in talks about global warming until recently, says Adil Najam, director of Boston University's Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and a longtime member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was just awarded a Nobel Prize.

And while there are still some who think there will be a technological save to our climate crisis, Najam is not one of them. He believes it will be the accumulation of little things, like the Bon Appetit initiative, which he applauds.

"Taking water out of Italy and drinking it in Massachusetts does more harm than good," says Najam. "When we consume anything, we need to look at the full ecological impact."