Author name: Dietitians for Climate Action

Last month we wrote about ultra-processed foods to figure out just how significant they are to climate change (answer: less than many people assume). Some readers loved this article, and others didn’t, so this month I wanted to address the main point of critical feedback we received. This is the distinction between sustainable diets and […]

A common recommendation from sustainability groups is to avoid ultra-processed foods. According to one of the biggest, most recent surveys of dietitians (in the U.S.), our profession believes that “fewer ultra-processed foods” will have the greatest impact on environmental sustainability. Do we have this right? The logic is pretty intuitive: these foods don’t have much

One of the biggest changes to Canada’s new Food Guide in 2019 is that it no longer includes dairy as its own food group (it’s now included under Protein Foods). When it was released, this change was one of the biggest points of discussion among dietitians. Limited or lack of dairy products are often a

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a lot of conversations recently about the winter we’re having. Clients, friends, family, and strangers I chat with are all noticing the extremely mild, almost snowless season. My 4 year-old keeps saying things like “winter is coming soon” in a hopeful voice, and I’m not sure what

“If you were on a ship taking on water, you wouldn’t ask the captain if we’re screwed; you’d pick up a bucket and start bailing out water.” –Jason Smerdon, climate scientist at the Columbia Climate School. Some climate actions demand big behavioural changes of us. They feel difficult, slow, and unlikely to get widespread adoption.

This blog post was written by Sylvia Black and edited by Anneke Hobson. Whenever we talk about climate-friendly diets, one message that comes through again and again is the need to reduce our intake of meat from ruminant animals, which for many Canadians means less beef. But some advocates in the restorative agriculture movement argue

The media and activists alike tend to focus on, and cycle through, pet solutions for sustainable food. What should we do to make the food system more sustainable? Beyond burgers! Cell-cultured meat! Regenerative farming! Vertical farming! Novel, dramatic solutions tend to have an advantage. Sometimes, when I notice a new sustainable food trend emerging, I’m

This month, our communications dietitian Sylvia Black wrote a summary on cell-based agriculture for the blog. There are a ton of possibilities for the future of agriculture in a changing climate, each with their own trade-offs. We don’t usually report on supply-side food solutions to climate change, because we’re dietitians and not farmers, agricultural scientists,

This month, our new(ish) communications volunteer, Sylvia Black, is our guest blog writer!  When I (Anneke) attended the Canadian Nutrition Society conference recently, a keynote speaker (and beef farmer) made a casual observation: that people are not going to eat less beef. I even wrote the quotation in my notebook, because the lack of substantiation