Happy 2023 everyone! I thought we could start the year with a light topic—research methods! About 5 years ago, I met Basak Topcu at the Canadian Association for Food Studies conference. We (Renita and I) were presenting on the same panel as Basak, who presented research from life-cycle assessment. I immediately recognized the power of […]

Disclaimer: Before diving in, I want to acknowledge that I have so much unearned privilege, including food security, education, whiteness, and income, and am well aware that I do not have the lived experience of many people who cannot afford food with dignity at this time.  Second disclaimer: I am not an economist. Food prices

We’ve talked quite a lot about climate-friendly diets lately, but reducing food waste is just as important, and in some modeling even more important, as a solution to climate change. It makes sense: producing most food generates greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain, and when we waste food, those emissions are generated in the

If you work in food and nutrition, you’ve surely noticed the explosion in meat and dairy alternatives that are being developed and marketed everywhere in Canada. Even in beef-farming Alberta, I’ve seen huge billboards advertising half-beef, half-lentil burgers. When I first started sampling these foods in Calgary about 15 years ago, this was completely unimaginable.

Drawdown Dietetics is inspired by Project Drawdown, a U.S.-based charity that launched in 2017. While we’re not connected to the organization, their evidence, modelling, and approach are all central to our work. Project Drawdown’s latest update this summer included some great new solutions, like Improved Aquaculture. However, they also revised their “Plant-Rich Diets” solution in

At Drawdown Dietetics, we’ve said to ourselves over and over that we can’t let climate-friendly eating become another fad diet or passing trend. We want this to be a weight-inclusive movement that does not contribute to disordered eating. But how do we do that? The culture of sustainable food comes with so many differing, conflicting

We focus on mitigating climate change at Drawdown Dietetics, so we think a lot about which solutions are best. There’s a valid critique out there of individual-level actions on climate change, so we took a look at it for this month’s blog post.  The concept of “carbon footprints” was popularized by a fossil fuel company

Whenever we present on climate change and food, we expect questions, and possibly a debate, about meat. But so far the focus has always been surprise and confusion about our local food stance. At Drawdown Dietetics, we want to call everyone’s attention to plant-rich diets (reduced meat consumption) and food waste reduction in Canada, because

While on parental leave in 2019, I noticed a new book called Drawdown–the first resource I’m aware of that had systematically reviewed, modeled, and listed the most effective, known strategies for reversing climate change for the public (1). This book hit me hard. The narrative around climate change usually focuses on the problem itself, or on doomsday scenarios (which always make me panic about my toddler’s future).