“Simple action: eat vegetarian, six days out of seven. Possible energy saving per person: 10 kilowatt hours per day.” Sustainable energy without the hot air, David JC Mackay, 2009
“you’d have to eat six intensively reared chickens today to obtain the same amount of the healthy omega-3 fatty acid found in just one chicken in the 1970s” Appetite for Destruction, World Wildlife Fund, October 2017
The place is Britain. The year is 2118.
Stuart has just done his weekly food shop and is unpacking the contents in the family kitchen. He spreads them on the counter before putting them away. Let’s take a look at them.
How are they packaged?
No plastic. Well, not much. Fruit and vegetables are sold uncovered at the store and transported in paper. Drinking fluids in glass bottles and a few tins. Cleaning fluids in recyclable plastic containers that have been refilled at the store. Bread, grains, nuts and pasta in paper. Meat is covered with throwaway plastic film, but Stuart has not bought much meat. Toothpaste in resuable rubber tubes. Stuart uses an electric razor. No plastic carrier bags.
The move away from plastic was a rare environmental success of the 21st century. Coverage by a popular environmentalist named David Attenborough galvanized public awareness of the damage done by plastics in oceans; political resolve was strengthened further by a number of reports into the adverse health effects of plastic wrapping on human beings. Over the ensuing decades plastic was – largely, not entirely – phased out of the food industry about as rapidly as it had been phased in during the 20th century.
This change was not without its disadvantages. Plastic had been helpful in preserving freshness and preventing infection. But a cultural shift towards earlier pre-plastic habits, such as only eating produce in season and buying locally produced fruit and vegetables, tamed the need for it. Fewer food miles meant less risk of disease being spread between countries via food transportation. And it came to be thought that perhaps the emphasis on hygiene in the early 21st century had been excessive. So that hygiene standards were lowered, but the nutritional value of food rose.
It was a painful transition and initially went too far. Some people died from infections that might have been prevented if some plastic wrapping had been maintained, particularly in relation to meat products. Single-minded efforts to eliminate plastic also led initially to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions from a burst of enthusiasm for home cooking foods, such as bread, that are more efficiently produced in bulk. By 2118, plastic has made a bit of a recovery; and a more sensible balance has been found.
Since the terrible drought of 2100, there has been much more careful use of water, which has added to the difficulties of preserving freshness and hygiene. Stuart has noticed that people buy food more frequently, with shorter intervals between successive shops, than they used to when he was a boy.
What has he bought, or not?
No meat. Well, hardly any. There has been a significant reduction in meat eating around the world and, as a result, human beings and their livestock no longer make up 90% of land mammals by mass: a partial recovery of wild animals has seen this percentage fall to 70%. That less land is taken up by cattle and sheep, with the consequent reforestation of large areas, is a manifestation now visible from outer space.
Stuart and his family still eat meat one day a week (Sunday treat). He has had a few run-ins on the topic with his brother Steve, a principled vegan. Stuart has expressed the view that there’s no need to be absolutist in one’s approach; Steve has expressed his view that there should be no compromise in the treatment of animals.
But Stuart’s family is largely veggie, as are most people these days. In the 21st century it had got to the point where the average factory chicken had much the same nutritional value as a cardboard box. This rather dampened enthusiasm for eating meat; and eventually a combination of health concerns, rising costs, the energy-and-climate-change argument, and concerns about animal welfare – different factors weighing variously with different people – brought about a significant change in the average human diet at both the national and international level.
Not much dairy.
It is hard to do without milk and cheese completely. Stuart has had run-ins with Steve about this. Steve maintains that it’s cruel to separate calves from their mothers at birth. Stuart claims that in some respects both calf and cow are in better health as a result, less at risk from certain diseases and, in the cow’s case, mastitis; and that in any case cows are not very bright or maternal and separation early on does not cause great distress. Steve is totally unconvinced and says you cannot know how a cow thinks or feels. Fortunately they have learnt how to be civil to one another, the brothers that is, in spite of the impasse.
With reduced consumption of meat and dairy, the sources of protein which dominated in the 20th century are less pervasive in 2118. For a long time, the prejudice against vegetarianism and veganism – namely that people who subscribed to either were likely to be weak, thin and undernourished – continued to hold sway in the general population. But a growing band of doctors was eventually able to persuade the public and politicians that there was really not much of a medical basis to this claim. And so Stuart’s shopping is rich in other sources of strength: quinoa, lentils and split peas, various beans and pulses, tofu, malt, …
Local and seasonal produce.
Stuart thinks fruit and vegetables taste better now than they did in the 21st century when they were eaten out-of-season, or picked unripe in order to be shipped thousands of miles to his local store. Variety might be more limited – it being June, there are strawberries in the shop but no apples – but Stuart thinks the greater flavour makes it all worthwhile.
What will he and his partner cook?
Simple recipes. Enforced to some extent by the greater emphasis placed on local produce, although a permaculture revolution has increased the variety of local produce from what it had been.
Recipes that do not involve (much) cooking, most of the time, with exceptions at the weekend. Back in the 21st century, it became fashionable for both men and women to devote many of their non-working hours to the kitchen. There were shows like the Great British Bake Off that topped popularity ratings, encouraging millions to emulate the magnificent culinary creations seen on television. There was little thought given to the energy or environmental footprint of these creations – until the damaging effects of biodiversity loss and global warming really started to affect people’s lives. With nearly all scientists saying that the average carbon footprint had to fall to 2-3 tCO2 per person per annum, and that that amount was produced by the typical western diet on its own, before anything else in life was measured, the general public and their political masters finally appreciated that eating and cooking habits needed to change.
Stuart remembers the arguments he used to have with his sister, Jane. Jane thought he was a miserable individual, unable to enjoy life, who – especially in combination with Steve, who was beyond the pale – cast a sort of pall over any social gathering with his ascetic attitudes. Stuart was on the defensive in those days: he used to argue back on the grounds of pragmatism, that patterns of consumption just had to change because they were not sustainable.
But attitudes have changed now, so it’s no longer necessary to be quite so defensive. It’s no longer thought that the secret to happiness is to eat all of the world’s foodstuffs, anymore than it is to visit all of the world’s cities. Most studies of happiness in the 21st century, and there were many of them as psychology became very popular, concluded that human populations in western countries were not actually very happy, despite an embarrassment of culinary riches. Daily chocolate, daily cake, daily anxiety. Add in the enviromental degradation, the growing cost, health problems, falling nutritional value … and fancy food lost its status as the source of eternal bliss.
Supported by physiological and psychological evidence, a few brave politicians started to talk in terms of “less is more”, a catch-phrase borrowed from a late 20th century beer advertisement. “Less is more” sounded punitive and dour at first, but wasn’t, because overconsumption was not making people happy. It was a slow process – in fact it took decades – but people in Britain gradually adapted to simpler and more local fare, to less meat and less sugar. Less chocolate. More energy. More robustness to infection. More happiness. Aided by the fact that the human population needed to change its ways in order to survive, the pioneering politicians started to gain traction.
It wasn’t about banning anything. It was still possible to drink wine and eat cake. It was just that cake returned to being something to be had maybe once a week or fortnight, not a daily item in the office or home. And, unless you were a strict vegan, with meat as with cake – not censored but no longer for every day or even most days.
Rewards and celebrations could, and increasingly did, take forms other than feasts. Dinner parties continued – after all, it was a natural human urge to gather and eat together – but the produce on offer became a little less fancy. The simplification of fare had a side benefit that hosts and guests could pay more attention to each other; and, oddly enough, a good time was still had by all.