Pinoys urged: Avoid processed food, stop climate change

MANILA, Philippines — A group of environmental advocates on Friday appealed to Filipinos to reduce their consumption of processed food and fast food meals as these also trigger climate change.

“Our penchant for processed food and fast food fare; our reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow our food; even our habits of going for rushed, quick meals and disregard for food wastes, which favor the practices of large agro-industrial companies and mass slaughterhouses only increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” Virginia Llorin, Food & Ecological Agriculture campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Philippines, said.

Llorin said the increasing industrial livestock production leads to rising GHG emissions in the country.

Livestock, she said, is one of the major sources of GHG emission in the Philippines’ agriculture sector, second only to rice.

In the 1994 GHG inventory, total emission from domestic livestock accounted for 32 percent of the country’s total GHG emission, she said.

A survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations in June 2017 revealed that the largest proportion of Filipinos (46 percent) eat meat a few times a week.

Through its “Diet for Climate” program, Greenpeace promotes consumption of adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables, along with sustainable agriculture.

Greenpeace conducts cooking demonstrations and storytelling sessions that showcase not only the very positive effects of ecologically farmed produce for the body and the environment, but also how fruit and vegetable dishes can be very tasty.

Citing a recent study of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, Llorin said the combined per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables of Filipinos is 155 grams, as opposed to the 400 grams per day recommendation of the World Health Organization.

In March last year, President Duterte signed the landmark Paris Agreement on Climate Change that calls for the reduction of carbon emissions, which have been linked to the occurrence of natural disasters and extreme weather conditions.