In South Africa, there's a growing awareness among consumers about how their food choices impact climate change.
Many seek ways to adopt a more sustainable diet, focusing on plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes. These choices are seen as more environmentally friendly.
However, it’s crucial to balance sustainability with nutritional needs. While plant-based foods are important, animal-based foods like dairy also play a key role in sustainable diets due to their high nutritional value.
Experts emphasise that sustainable diets should be accessible, affordable, culturally acceptable, and beneficial for both people and the planet.
Maretha Vermaak, a registered dietitian at Rediscover Dairy, highlights the importance of a balanced diet.
She recommends a mix of plant-based foods with moderate amounts of eggs, dairy, poultry, and fish, and limited red meat consumption.
Vermaak points out that solely plant-based diets may lack essential micronutrients like vitamin B12, iron, calcium and zinc, which are crucial for overall health.
Animal-source foods such as dairy are rich in these nutrients and have higher bioavailability than plant-based options. Therefore, incorporating a variety of foods is essential for a healthy and sustainable diet.
Different regions face unique nutritional challenges due to cultural and geographical factors.
For example, South Africa struggles with low calcium intake, partly because of limited dairy consumption. To address this, the country's dietary guidelines recommend daily consumption of milk, yoghurt or maas.
Professor Mieke Faber from North-West University points out that dietary shifts affect health and the environment differently depending on the context.
While high-income countries should reduce animal-based food consumption to prevent diseases and environmental harm, low- and middle-income countries like South Africa, where nutrient deficiencies are common, may need to increase animal-based food intake to meet nutritional needs.
When considering a more climate-friendly diet, it’s important to prioritise balance, nutritional quality, and environmental impact. Increasing plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds can improve sustainability.
Limiting highly processed foods and reducing food waste are also crucial steps. Swopping out some red meat for legumes and reducing packaging waste through recycling and reusing can further reduce environmental impact.
Eating more plant-based foods
Experiment with ways to include more vegetables and fruit, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds in your meals.
Some ideas include planning meals that use a variety of differently coloured vegetables, adding leafy greens and tomato to your cheese sandwich or spinach and red pepper to an omelette.
Try out delicious recipes for meals that are plant-based and boost the nutritional quality by including legumes and dairy.
Limiting highly processed foods
Reduce the amounts of nutrient-poor sugary beverages, salty snacks and high-fat takeaways that you purchase every month.
Instead, focus your food budget on food choices that are nutrient-dense such as fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, yoghurt and maas.
Cultivate an interest in cooking from scratch, and make preparing healthy meals and lunchboxes a fun team effort in your home.
Swopping out red meat
Use smaller portions of beef and add legumes such as beans, lentils and chickpeas to bulk up a stew, curry, mince sauce or casserole.
It helps to plan fewer red meat-based meals in a month, opting instead for chicken, fish or vegetarian alternatives.
Reducing your food waste
Many consumers don’t realise that our collective food waste is a major contributor (around 10%) to global greenhouse gas emissions.
So, cutting down our food waste is one of the most effective ways that consumers can lead more climate-friendly lives.
This means planning your meals, shopping only for what you need, storing food correctly, freezing surplus food whenever possible, giving away excess food and making sure you use perishable food items such as dairy before their expiry dates.
Recycling, reusing and repurposing food packaging waste
While food packaging has a protective role, it is a major contributor to environmental pollution.
Actively reduce your use of single-use plastics and use reusable shopping bags for your food shopping.
In addition, set up a family system for recycling, reusing or repurposing your food packaging waste to reduce your household’s impact on the environment.
People are rethinking their diets as they become more concerned about the climate crisis, which presents an opportunity to prioritise both health and sustainability.
Nutrient-dense and affordable foods like dairy will continue to play a significant role in sustainable diets, ensuring a healthy future within budget constraints.