Joe McNamee: Saving the planet with sustainable choices
Cashel Blue cheese.
The second EAT-Lancet publication on healthy, just, and sustainable food systems, the work of globally renowned scientists and experts, has just landed and it is potent stuff.
Even if we jettisoned all fossil fuels in the morning, oil, gas, and coal, the current industrial food production models would still be sufficient to tip the climate beyond 1.5C.
Almost one third of global emissions arise from food production: methane from cattle; deforestation, especially in the Amazon, to grow animal feed; and fertiliser production.
The rap sheet on industrial food production goes on: huge biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and ravaging freshwaters and oceans, thanks to polluting fertilisers.
The first publication from the EAT–Lancet Commission, in 2019, also arrived with a mighty thump.
It was shocking stuff but, so shocking, that for a while it appeared it might make a difference, driving the EU’s 2019 Green Deal strategy which promised to make the continent climate neutral by 2050, transforming the European food system into a competitive circular economy that was environmentally sustainable and socially just.
Hugely ambitious stuff and for a while we dared to dream.
Then the lobbyists got hold of it, advocating for the all-powerful vested industrial interests with most to lose, ultra-processed food producers, Big Ag and the Ag-pharma sector.
Also up in arms were the populist politicians who opposed it because environmentalism is seen as part of the ‘woke’ package.
A year later, we were dealing with the ravages of the global pandemic, followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which played havoc with the world economy and sent food and energy prices soaring.
The Green Deal was a long term strategy but most politicians rarely think beyond the next election.
We even have our own sleeveens in the Dáil who have been gulled by vested interests into believing they were advocating on behalf of our farmers in opposing the Green Deal.
Most of our actual farmers are little more than slaves to the industrialised food system.
The lobbyists licked their lips, opened their wallets, and the Green Deal is now in tatters, primary ambitions shelved.
Right now, lobbyists are probably working up an appetite to devour this second EAT-Lancet commission report, even though over 70 renowned scientists offer positive alternative solutions, in the form of a Planetary Health Diet (PHD).
This PHD models a new food system which would still be able to deliver a healthy, nutritious and sustainable diet to 10bn people, while being equally good for the wellbeing of the planet.
That PHD involves less meat, more fresh vegetables, fruit, and legumes, and eliminating ultra-processed foods — in other words, the diet of our forebears before we started turning the land, rivers, lakes, and oceans into wastelands, killing ourselves with the food we consume.
I always find it fascinating to see how ‘skinny’ we once were in old Reeling in the Years programmes, compared to today when we are the third most obese country in Europe.
Globally, diet-related non-communicable diseases are now a primary cause of death.
There is always a temptation to feel powerless when confronted with such stark realities, believing we ordinary citizens are unable to effect change. We are not.
To paraphrase that old Slow Food-Terra Madre quote, they are all powerful, but we are billions. We can buy Irish but from small or medium-sized producers making food the right way.
We can shun the ultra-processed and cook meals from scratch, using local, seasonal fresh produce where possible.
We can shop in farmer’s markets or from local growers for that produce. We can eat less meat while trying to source it directly from the farmer, so they receive just reward for their endeavours.
And we can tell our politicians at every opportunity that we want real change, not lip service.
The explosion in interest in natural wines on this island has direct links to the thriving London scene that began to emerge in the 2000s.
One who did more than most to drive this change was chef Ed Wilson whose exceptional homely and unpretentious cooking at his Brawn restaurant was a perfect marriage for an equally superb natural wine list.
Ed will deliver a seasonal four-course set menu (Oct 29) at the Irish equivalent to Brawn, L’Atitude 51, which not only carries the best natural wine list in the country but has a kitchen turning out food to match.
A special wine list with optional pairing will be will be curated by L51’s Davide Belà, one of Irish wine’s unsung heroes, and the equally formidable Wesley Triggs, former manager of Brawn, now managing The Glass Curtain.
- Email info@latitude51.ie to reserve.
As a small genuinely artisan producer, Sally Barnes, of Woodcock Smokery, has seen her fish smoking business profoundly impacted over the decades by the pollution of freshwaters and oceans by industrial agriculture, most profoundly of all on the wild salmon which earned her international recognition, awards and acclaim.
Yet Sally still continues to fight the doughty fight and her Wild Table Sunday Lunch (October 26, 1-4pm, €100pp) is always a most delicious reminder of what real Irish food should taste like, taking place in one of Ireland’s most unique and beautiful dining spaces, The Keep, alongside her West Cork smokery.
- Booking: woodcocksmokery.com
My recent few days in Dingle for Blas na hÉireann and the Dingle Food Festival were both a literal and metaphorical tonic and a fabulous reminder of just how vibrant the small Irish food producer can be, even in the face of such enormous challenges.
Amongst the many producers I ran into were Sinead and Paul Farrelly, of Drummully Boxty Ltd, in Co Cavan.
Paul first began making boxty with his mother in 1983 and the business is still thriving and I walked away from our encounter with one of their baked boxty loaves (€3.20) (and a gluten-free boiled version for coeliacs) which I fried up the next morning for breakfast, as tradition dictates.
But I rarely, if ever, eat a fried breakfast these days and still had half a loaf left when I began to ponder the links around Europe between different traditional foods, which would once upon a time have been described as ‘peasant food’.
Boxty is essentially potatoes, flour and salt, nothing more — which sounds an awful lot like Italian gnocchi to me.
A bit of mince in the fridge, a tin of tomatoes in the cupboard and carrots, onions, and celery in the veg box, were soon bubbling in the pot to make a lush, rich ragu which I then spooned over golden slices of hot boxty loaf, fried to a crisp in butter, for a Hiberno-Italian supper, the like of which I haven’t enjoyed so much in many a year.
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