Haseeb Foods

Is grass-fed beef good or bad for the climate? That’s the question examined in a major report released this week by the University of Oxford’s Food Climate Research Network (FCRN). While “Grazed and Confused” intended to reduce confusion about the climate merits of pasture-based meat, the report’s narrow focus on the net climate impacts of grass-fed meat has instead muddied the waters.

That’s because one of the report’s main conclusions—”Eating less meat, of all types, is critical for fighting climate change”—fails to account for the many environmental, animal welfare, and health benefits of well-managed, pasture-raised animals. The report’s message also undercuts the urgent need to expand support for pasture-based and mixed crop-livestock systems as vital alternatives to the industrial meat industry’s inhumane and environmentally destructive practices, including reliance on toxic, chemical-intensive GMO monocultures for feed.

The authors base their conclusion on their finding that the carbon sequestration gains of even well-managed grazing systems are eclipsed by these farms’ methane and nitrous oxide emissions. We agree that reducing meat consumption is key to combating climate change. But does that mean we should focus on eating less grass-fed meat or reducing investment and support for farmers that adopt these kinds of production systems?

No. Since more than 95 percent of the beef consumed in the United States comes from animals raised on polluting, inhumane factory farms, we should focus first on slashing consumption—and subsidies for the production of industrial animal products. We also need to significantly increase consumption of and investment in plant-based protein foods. Research shows the world cannot meet greenhouse gas reduction targets without drastically cutting emissions from our meat and dairy-intensive diets. And most of that reduction must come from the global West and North—especially in the U.S., where we eat more meat per person than any other major country in the world.

Grass-fed benefits go beyond climate

Grass-fed beef is not a silver bullet for climate-conscious carnivores. But for those who do eat meat, eating smaller portions of meat that is produced by well-managed, certified grass-fed, and organic farms has other benefits for the well-being of animals, pollinators, public health, biodiversity, our soils, air, and water.

In contrast to industrial feedlots that generate massive air, soil, and water pollution from feed production and toxic concentrated livestock waste, well-managed pastures and rangeland can turn manure into organic nourishment for soils and crops. These systems can also provide critical habitat for pollinators and other wildlife, and can bolster resilience to the severe droughts and flooding created by climate change, by enriching soils to improve water absorption and holding capacity. When accounting for carbon sequestration in soils, several studies have found that some U.S. pasture-based and grazing systems produce a smaller carbon footprint than industrial confinement systems. When regenerative practices like composting are implemented on grazing lands, the results can be spectacular. For example, Marin Carbon Project found that if just five percent of California’s grazed grasslands were covered with compost, this would sequester 28 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere—equivalent to the annual emissions of 6 million cars.

Pasture-based and organic meat production is also far better for public health. While feedlot animals receive routine doses of antibiotics and are often injected with hormones and other growth promoters that can harm animal welfare and human health, organic and certified grass-fed livestock are almost always raised without hormones and routine antibiotics. This reduces the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans—a major public health concern. Grass-fed meat also has higher levels of nutrients, including Omega-3 fats, beta-carotene, conjugated linoleic acid, and Vitamin E, than grain-fed beef, according to several studies.

FCRN’s report argues that grass-fed beef is not the ultimate solution to climate change. We agree. But as we reduce our overall meat consumption, switching to well-managed organic and pasture-raised, grass-fed meat—including mixed crop-livestock systems—can produce vital gains for our environment, our health, and animal welfare. The quickest path to these important goals is to shift consumption and subsidies away from the disastrous, corporate-controlled, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and monoculture feed production which cause immense harm to the environment, farmers, and consumers.

Institutional purchasers must lead the change

To benefit our climate and public health, Friends of the Earth has launched the Better Burgers Campaign. This initiative helps consumers and food service professionals cut their climate impact by making and consuming smaller portions of better meat, putting vegetables and legumes at the center of the plate (as Menus of Change recommends), and making delicious blended burgers. Blended burgers replace 30 to 50 percent of the meat with mushrooms, legumes, or other veggies. Using less meat shrinks a burger’s carbon footprint considerably—and the money saved by using less meat can purchase better-quality, third-party certified animal and plant-based foods produced locally and regionally using ecological farming methods. With nearly half of our food dollars spent outside the home, restaurants, schools, government institutions, hospitals, and businesses can put a big dent in climate change by serving more plant-based foods and downsizing meat portions through innovative recipes, such as the blended burger.

More research needed

While the FCRN report provides new information on grass-fed meat and climate change, we need more research to determine which systems, under which conditions, can sequester the most carbon and minimize methane releases. Given the dramatic variations of grazing systems around the world, and the potential of silvopasture and other management practices to deliver significant climate benefits, we still have much to learn. We also need more holistic research to better understand the wide-ranging benefits of pasture-raised and organic grass-fed systems—and the most effective strategies for swiftly moving our society to reduce overall meat consumption. While we don’t have all the answers yet, it’s abundantly clear we have viable alternatives that can nourish consumers’ health and our imperiled environment. We can go a long way in that direction by shifting public policy and institutional purchasing to help people shift to protein sources—from both plants and animals—that are better for our bodies and for the planet.

A new report by international experts draws significant linkages between industrial food and farming practices and many of the “severest health conditions afflicting populations around the world,” from respiratory diseases to a range of cancers and systematic livelihood stresses.

The report was released on October 9, 2017, and is titled, “Unravelling the Food-Health Nexus: Addressing Practices, Political Economy, and Power Relations to Build Healthier Food Systems.” It was produced by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and commissioned by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food (GAFF).

The report aims to estimate the global aggregate human and economic costs of the various ways industrial food and farming systems are making people sick. Ruth Richardson, the Executive Director of GAFF, calls the report’s conclusions “staggering” and “difficult to ignore.”

To underpin their calculations, IPES-food reviewed the available evidence in five key areas of impact: occupational hazards to food and farm workers; environmental contamination; contaminated, unsafe and altered foods; unhealthy dietary patterns; and food insecurity.

They found that malnutrition costs the world US$3.5 trillion per year, while obesity alone will cost US$760 billion per year by 2025. They found that combined European Union and United States losses from exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals amount to US$557 billion per year, while antimicrobial-resistant infections are already thought to be incurring US$20 billion to US$34 billion of annual costs in the U.S.

“What is troubling is how systematically these risks are generated—at different nodes of the chain and in different parts of the world,” writes IPES-Food co-chair Olivia Yambi.

The authors found that negative health impacts are experienced unequally and that “the low power and visibility of those most affected by food systems jeopardizes a complete understanding,…leaving major blind spots in the evidence base.”

Lead author Cecilia Rocha writes, “the industrial food and farming model that systematically generates negative health impacts also generates highly unequal power relations. Powerful actors are therefore able to shape our understanding of food-health linkages, promoting solutions that leave the root causes of ill health unaddressed.”

When the terms of the debate are set by powerful actors, including the private sector, governments, and donors, “the prevailing solutions obscure the social and environmental fallout of industrial food systems,…reinforcing existing social-health inequalities,” according to the report.

The members of IPES-Food say that complexity “should not be an excuse for inaction.” “We know enough to act,” they write.

The report identifies five key leverage points for building healthier food systems: i) promoting food systems thinking at all levels; ii) reasserting scientific integrity and research as a public good; iii) bringing the positive impacts of alternative food systems to light; iv) adopting the precautionary principle; and, v) building integrated food policies under participatory governance.

IPES-Food co-chair Olivier De Schutter, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, writes “when health impacts are placed alongside social and environmental impacts, and the mounting costs they generate, the case for action is overwhelming. It is now clearer than ever that healthy people and a healthy planet are co-dependent.”

Join the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) live on Twitter on October 12, 2017, from 5:30am EST (11:30am CEST) as they present the details of their upcoming International Forum on Food and Nutrition.

The BCFN Forum is an international platform for dialogue and networking that identifies powerful ideas and concrete solutions to current environmental, health, and socioeconomic challenges affecting the food system. The forum, held in December, will bring together policymakers, the scientific community, the private sector, and civil society to share knowledge, analysis, and best practices in sustainable food and agriculture.

The eighth edition will focus on the themes of food security, climate change and migration, sustainable food systems at national and local levels, and the reform of the agricultural policy in Europe.

Join the conversation this Thursday, October 12, by using the hashtags #foodsustainability and #BCFNforum. Click here to learn more about BCFN’s eighth International Forum on Food and Nutrition.

Julie Kunen, PhD, oversees conservation activities in 15 countries, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, as the Vice President of the Americas program for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). With a decades-long career in conservation, academia, and development, she is committed to uniting the worlds of food, sustainability, and conservation.

Most recently Kunen helped launch in 2015 the Rainforest to Table program, which focuses on connecting the worlds of conservation, food production, and culinary arts in order to create a more sustainable and equitable food system in the Amazon. The program brings together leading Latin American chefs, conservation experts, and local activists and entrepreneurs to strategize about how to make gastronomy an agent for change, benefitting forests and local communities in the Amazon.

Food Tank had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Kunen about her work and her passion for food, conservation, and Latin America.

Food Tank (FT): Do you see your conservation work around food as a shift in the traditional approach and scope of conservation work? How did this program develop?

Julie Kunen (JK): I see our work on food and conservation as an extension of what WCS and other conservation groups have traditionally worked on, and this extension can be seen in two major ways. First, community based conservation, in which indigenous or other traditional communities make sustainable use of the natural resources found in their territories, is an important and effective conservation approach. This is because these communities are stewards of very important lands and waters for conservation, but at the same time, of course they, like any other people, aspire to a better, more secure, and resilient life for themselves and their children and must find ways to support themselves. So, activities like production of bird-friendly coffee or sustainable fishing are also actions that support conservation. My organization, WCS, has long supported indigenous and traditional communities to secure their rights and strengthen the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of supply chains for well-known products like coffee or cacao, but also less well-known products like paiche (fish), caiman (crocodile), or plant extracts (for cocktails bitters) from the Amazon.

Second, we know that destruction of tropical forests to clear the way for industrial agricultural production of commodities like palm oil or soy or to create pastures for cattle ranching is a major driver of global climate change because of the carbon emissions from burning those forests, not to mention the methane produced by the cattle themselves. And even when ranching or farming is done at a family-scale, it can still conflict with the needs of wildlife, such as when a top predator like a jaguar kills a calf because there is very little wild prey left for it to eat, or when grazing ungulates like guanaco (the wild ancestor of the llama, which lives in Patagonia) compete with sheep and goats for grass. Our work on food and conservation tries to address these issues at both ends. We’d like to encourage agricultural and ranching practices that are viable economically, but friendlier to wildlife. At the same time, we want to influence people’s food choices towards pro-conservation options, such as eating less meat.

The Rainforest to Table initiative, founded by Forest Trends, Canopy Bridge, WCS, and the restaurant group Amaz, grew out of these existing efforts and was spurred by our real love of food and the recognition that connecting people to conservation through their palates was very powerful because it is pleasurable.

FT: How do you connect your passions of conservation and love of food in your work? How do they relate to each other in your Rainforest to Table program?

JK: For me the connection is very personal because I’m such a foodie. I always joke that my favorite moment of the day is when I am at home, eating a great dish that I’ve made while reading the food section of The New York Times and talking with my husband about what we are going to cook next! A couple of years ago, I sat down to reflect on my career path and try to find ways to more closely meld my personal passions, which include cooking and gardening, eating well, connecting to other cultures through food and travel, and supporting our local farms and farmers, with what I do for a living, and I realized that my whole professional life has actually been lived in this intersection.

Thinking about food and conservation together suddenly gave a logical frame to many different aspects of my development as a professional—from research on agave cultivation in the Precolumbian American southwest to my PhD studies of ancient Maya agriculture, to a project I did on kitchen gardens in Costa Rica, to international development work on sustainable coffee and cacao production, to my current work on wildlife conservation. In that frame it all made sense—eating well and from a diverse palate of locally available choices is itself a conservation strategy. And food and conservation (#foodandconservation) became a major focus of my work.

Rainforest to Table is a movement uniting chefs, conservationists, and communities to promote Amazonian gastronomy, conservation, and community development. It is a collective effort to “rebrand” the Amazon as a delicious, nutritious, and valuable global pantry, with highly regarded chefs, who are trendsetters and cultural influencers in their countries, as ‘brand ambassadors.’ The full name of the initiative is actually Cumari: Rainforest to Table. Cumari is a word in the native American Guarani language for a type of hot pepper, and it also means happiness. It is the brainchild of several colleagues in the conservation world, including Michael Jenkins at Forest Trends, and Marta Echavarria and Jacob Olander at Canopy Bridge, and pioneering chefs like Kamila Seidler of Gustu in La Paz and Pedro Miguel Schiaffino of Amaz and Malabar in Lima.

The idea is to increase the value of the Amazon by introducing chefs and diners in Latin America’s great cities to the diversity of foods from the Amazon, including fruits, spices, nuts, peppers, fish, and many other ingredients. Doing so helps urban residents identify with and care about the Amazon, so it isn’t just a vast blank spot on their mental map, an empty frontier good for nothing but mines or oil wells or dams. But this movement also has more practical implications, because we are helping build sustainable businesses that provide income for local producers, support sustainable supply chains, and provision an exciting evolution in Latin American gastronomy.

FT: Part of your program is partnering with chefs and local communities. What has the experience of working with them taught you about food and its cultural importance?

JK: I trained as an anthropologist so I have long appreciated the centrality of food to culture and identity. And in Latin America especially, families, friends, and communities gather around meals—lingering, talking, socializing in a way we in the U.S. often feel too rushed to make time for; and food is a major element of rituals and marks social milestones. Working with chefs has taught me how deeply these artists respect and delight in good ingredients and how curious and questing they are in exploring new flavors and creating new dishes on their menus. Also how seriously they take their role in defining a new Amazon gastronomy and their important role in presenting this aspect of their country’s culture to their guests. But then they have to meld that delight with the practicalities of a business and think about, ok, how can I ship that to my restaurant, what about cold storage and phyto-sanitary permits and how much will it cost to serve it? It’s hard to do all of that!

FT: How do you address the issues of biodiversity and economic development in conservation work? How does your program navigate these issues?

JK: That’s a big question. Part of WCS’s mission is to inspire people to value nature, and we envision a world in which societies embrace and benefit from the diversity and integrity of life on earth. Biodiversity and economic development have to go hand-in-hand if we want a sustainable outcome for people and for the planet over the long term. There is no other option. That’s why the Sustainable Development Goals which were adopted by the global community at the U.N. in 2016 emphasize not just ending poverty and hunger but also supporting life on land and in the seas, and responsible consumption and production. WCS supports the SDGs at a global scale and our work in the field is on-the-ground evidence of that commitment. I’m thinking, for example, of our efforts to empower indigenous communities in the Amazon – to gain legal title to their lands, to zone them for economic production and protection, to partake in their administration, and to control them against illegal incursions.

FT: What are some ways people outside of Latin America can help support your programs conservation efforts?  

JK: By being thoughtful in what they choose to eat! Whether you want to reduce your carbon footprint, avoid the inhumane treatment of animals, or support a local system of farms and farmers, there are good food choices to be made. As I’ve written elsewhere, in being thoughtful, environmental sustainability can be a delicious choice. When you dine out, look for restaurants run by chefs who are committed to sustainability—a little online research will identify them—or use an app like Seafood Watch to help you choose good seafood items on the menu. Also, when traveling, choose community-run eco-options if your taste runs to ecotourism. For example, The New York Times recently ran a story on ecotourism in the Brazilian Amazon describing both an environmentally unfriendly option of interacting with pink river dolphins in a totally inappropriate way, but also a fantastic community-run ecolodge, Uakari, which I’ve had the pleasure to visit, that supports a really important protected area in Brazil. And of course visit the restaurants of the chefs involved in our Rainforest to Table movement, many of which can be found on lists like the World’s 50 Best, or direct your charitable giving to conservation groups leading this movement.

FT: In your opinion, what is the current state of the Amazon food movement? What is its future?

JK: I’ve listened to a lot of discussions lately in the food-focused media and social media about the challenges of cultural appropriation of foodways and the labeling of certain cuisines as ‘ethnic’ food, but I’m really excited about where Amazonian gastronomy is now, because its growing reputation is coming from the attention given to it by Latin American chefs in Latin American countries whose territories encompass the Amazon.

I also think high-end gastronomy — and some of the chefs involved run really high-end restaurants, so the whole enterprise could be labelled as rather elitist — can point the way with leading-edge cooking that will then drive tastes and eating choices in more mass market contexts. I think in the not-distant future we will see Amazon-focused fast-casual restaurants, with more Amazonian ingredients entering the marketplace as acai did, and much more global familiarity with ingredients. I mean, I can now buy paiche, a delicious and sustainably harvested Amazonian fish that is an emblem of that river system, at Whole Foods.

Finally, my colleagues and I are so excited about the future of Amazon foods that we are organizing an event called Amazon Meets NYC in 2018, which will bring a group of Latin American chefs to New York City to engage in culinary dialogue with New York chefs, cooking with them in their kitchens to create meals based on Amazon ingredients. There will be dinners, a cocktail reception, a street food walk, and a symposium on Amazon food and conservation.  Stay tuned for more information as the event gets closer.

First discovered 5,000 years ago in China, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, besides water, and more than half of Americans drink tea on a daily basis, according to the Tea Association of the USA. Drinking tea lends numerous health benefits from antioxidants, flavonoids, and polyphenols. While iced tea was introduced in 1904 and is still popular today, hot tea sales, specifically high-quality specialty tea, have grown steadily in the past several years. Consumers are increasingly interested in fair trade, organic practices, and sustainable farming.

Tea purveyors such as the Dachi Tea Company are responding to this demand. While taking Chinese language classes in Taiwan, Nicholas Palumbo and Simon Thomas, co-founders of Dachi Tea, realized they both shared a love for the tea ritual. Locating a hillside on the outskirts of Taipei, they brought in master growers and started a crowdfunding campaign to create their tea company.

“The concept is like chocolate,” Palumbo explained. “That’s bean to bar. This is leaf to cup. It’s a purer experience when you understand the product you’re consuming and where it’s from.”

Palumbo and Thomas are just one example of a recent trend in the tea industry—cutting out the middleman. Many company owners are going directly to the source and working with farmers to ensure an unadulterated product in a healthy environment.

Five Mountains Tea, for example, is operated by Jason Creech and Jeff Dorchaide, the co-founders who originally met each other as monks studying in Southeast Asia. They source their heirloom organic tea in the Lin’Cang region of China’s Yunnan province. They also operate without a middleman by directly purchasing from the farmers and packaging the product in biodegradable packaging.

“Fine teas require a delicate ecosystem and they cannot flourish without a healthy environment. Sustainable growing practices and organic farming methods both play a crucial role and have an intimate relationship,” said Creech. “This is why [our] signature teas are certified organic provincial heirloom varietals, biodiversely grown and sustainably hand-harvested from ancient virgin rainforests.”

Whether white, green, black, or herbal, not every tea is made from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. Cat Spring Yaupon Tea, based outside Houston, Texas, “sustainably wild-harvests” what is technically an invasive species—yaupon. It is the only known caffeinated leaf on North American soil.

“We like to say it’s ‘Texan’ for tea,” Abianne Falla, the company’s co-founder, says. “Texan isn’t a language and it’s not really a tea but it kind of explains what we do.”

A member of the holly family, yaupon is picked and dried like other teas but doesn’t have the same bitter tannins so it can’t be over-steeped. Many people don’t realize it’s a different plant because the taste is familiar. Restaurants in Falla’s area like it for that reason—they make a pot and it lasts all day. No excess waste.

While the company is U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) certified organic and striving to grow yaupon without harming the surrounding eco-system, they also created a Working with Dignity program. The program offers jobs to people exiting the criminal justice program, as well as sex-trafficking survivors, with the goal of helping them transition into other meaningful employment.

“Sustainability is more than just land. It’s about people, too,” Falla says. “Lots of people don’t have a reference looking for a job. We want to be that for them.”

Another sustainable not-quite-tea operation is the Graviola Tea Company, single-origin and based in New Mexico. They directly source leaves from the soursop fruit trees in the Samosir region of Sumatra, Indonesia. Soursop, also known as graviola, is “widely consumed throughout the world and has been known to Europeans since the 1500s,” as co-founder John Krehbiel stated in a recent email. They partnered with a non-government organization in Sumatra to make sure island life remains sustainable.

“Eight families already have a better income and they take more care of the environment,” said Thomas Heinle, co-founder of Graviola with Ratnauli Gultom and Krehbiel. “For the farmers, this is an additional income which they can spend on education for their children, make their houses better, and other things.”

Small, family-owned tea companies like these have been changing the industry by connecting the tea drinker to the tea farmer. Because consumers have noticed, so have the large corporations. Unilever, with product lines like Lipton Tea, has been growing their Sustainable Living brands for the past six years, which has seen a 50-percent increase since 2016, according to a company press release. They are also working in conjunction with other major industry brands like Twinings and the Ethical Tea Partnership on identifying key challenges and creating a shared vision for a sustainable future with Tea 2030.

Cindi Bigelow, President and CEO of Bigelow Tea, the company her grandmother founded in 1945, has been personally in the industry for the past 30 years. She said their dialogue started 15 years ago about the kind of environmental imprint they leave. Since then, they have incorporated recyclable materials, an organic line of teas, composting, and solar power.

“Sustainability means being in the business a long time and taking care of the earth so the plants can be strong,” Bigelow says. She explains that not all tea gardens are created equal, producers must understand where their products are coming from and create long-term relationships with growers.

“Make sure you take care of your people and your product,” Bigelow says. “That’s how you have a sustainable industry.”

Families across the United States are getting together this holiday season to enjoy each other’s company and pass plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. It’s a time to be thankful for our health and the health of our loved ones.

With all of the holiday meals comes the opportunity to acknowledge and address the fact that how we produce our food affects our health and well-being.

Industrial farms overuse antibiotics to produce much of the meat that enters the American food system, serving as a prominent example of how the food system can negatively impact our health. Past surveys show that 86 percent of Americans eat turkey at Thanksgiving. For those getting ready to cook up their holiday bird, there may be a surprise ingredient on the menu: antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

A 2013 analysis by Consumer Reports found that among samples of ground turkey purchased at retail stores, 90 percent of them contained at least one of five bacteria that the analysis tested for, including E. coli and Enterococcus—bacteria that can cause foodborne illness. Nearly all of the bacteria found in these samples displayed resistance to at least one of the antibiotics typically used to treat infections that they cause.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing threats to global health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic-resistant infections kill at least 23,000 Americans annually. Without swift action, this number will likely rise; one estimate states that by 2050, drug-resistant bacteria could kill 10 million people worldwide every year.

Despite warnings from the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics, industrial farms continue to misuse antibiotics. Approximately 70 percent of the antibiotics important to human medicine sold in the U.S. are for use on livestock and poultry. Instead of using these medicines solely to treat disease, meat producers administer antibiotics routinely to keep animals from getting sick in unsanitary, crowded living conditions. This misuse of the drugs breeds bacteria resistant to antibiotics, which are commonly referred to as superbugs, and can cause illnesses that are difficult and sometimes impossible to treat.

Turkey producers are no exception to the rampant misuse of antibiotics common in the meat industry. In a 2015 survey by the Food Animal Concerns Trust, 10 out of 12 of the largest U.S. turkey producers responded that they allow the use of medically important antibiotics for disease prevention, a practice that can fuel drug-resistant bacteria. Both the USDA and the FDA have found that bacteria present in retail samples of turkey meat are more resistant than bacteria found in other animal species.

The industry estimates that Americans eat approximately 40 million turkeys on Thanksgiving and another 22 million turkeys on Christmas. Consumers have an opportunity this holiday season to help move turkey producers away from misusing important, life-saving medicines. As you’re shopping for your holiday turkey, or any other meat for that matter, keep an eye out for meat raised without antibiotics.

If you support producers that raise turkeys without the routine use of antibiotics, you’ll not only help protect your family’s health, you’ll also help preserve the foundations of modern medicine.

Thank farmers who raise animals without routine antibiotics this holiday season! Share this video on Twitter or Facebook and help raise awareness about antibiotic use in our food system.

Chef Justin Warner is a science-oriented, self-proclaimed food rebel. When he was chosen to compete on Food Network’s 24-Hour Restaurant Battle in 2010, his only professional cooking experience had been making bagel sandwiches at a small shop in Hagerstown, Maryland. But he had service experience at a Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant, where he became fascinated by high-class, scientific cooking techniques. Warner went on to win the restaurant battle, as well as the eighth season of the Food Network Starcompetition, in 2012.

Since then, Warner wrote The Laws of Cooking: And How to Break Them and ran an experimental, yet highly acclaimed, Brooklyn restaurant called Do or Dine, which was open from 2011 to 2015. He now regularly serves as a judge on shows such as Guy’s Grocery Games and Cooks vs. Cons.

Food Tank spoke with Warner about his experiences with the food system and sustainability as a celebrity chef.

Food Tank (FT): You’ve cooked all around the country and the world. What have you noticed about food systems, where food comes from, and how it gets to your plate, across different states and countries?

Justin Warner (JW): One thing that truly I’ve found fascinating, once I broke into the world of really being obsessed with food and where it comes from, is that a lot of the food in our food basket of America does not get consumed by the food basket. For example, I was in Colorado—they have western slope peaches there, and everybody loves western slope peaches. And that was the only real thing that I saw people eating locally, aside from farmers market stuff. Everybody was excited about the peaches or Olathe corn from Kansas, but it’s wild. That’s the thing that constantly baffles me. My wife is from South Dakota, and you’d be surprised at how little local stuff there is, when they are one of the best beef producers. They’re like our Argentina. They make great beef. They grow wheat that gets shipped to Italy to be made into Italian pasta to be sold back to us. Mario Batali should open his next restaurant in South Dakota!

FT: Why do you think it happens that way?

JW: Farmers need to make money, and if the audience isn’t there to pay a premium for goods, then it’s not going to happen. And it’s depressing, for sure. I think it all comes down to audience, and whether people do things out of art or out of profit. And unfortunately, we all pretty much have to consider profit, otherwise we can’t do things anymore.

FT: When you ran Do or Dine, and now as you visit other restaurants and continue to cook, how important is the origin of the food? Is sustainability an important factor for you when it comes to what you eat?

JW: It’s difficult. We were in a very unique position in that we had no money to open the restaurant, and we had to do whatever we could to survive. So yeah, it was important to us, but not more important than keeping the lights on. If there were an option, say, of duck breasts, of course we got Hudson Valley duck. Of course we had Long Island fluke. All of our fish was locally caught. We might have had Norwegian mackerel once, but for the most part, on our standout dishes, we tried to stay as local as possible. But at times, we wanted to make steak tartare with beef tenderloin—something tells me that that cow was not locally harvested. So we had to draw the line. We didn’t say “when possible,” but we said “when appropriate.”

We just tried the best that we could. And we had a bunch of cool purveyors. One thing that we were really into was supporting our purveyors who were community-minded. So we bought our fish not from Sysco but from a dude named Freeman. And I know Freeman, and Freeman knows me. And we bought our meats from Paisanos, which is a local butcher shop. We really wanted to focus—because New York is not known for its cows and whatnot—if we could not do a local thing, we at least wanted to support local companies.

FT: Restaurants and individual households throw out a staggering amount of food every day. What do you think we can do to reduce this issue of excessive food waste?

JW: Really, it starts with finding a grocer that either understands packaging on a per-person, per-serving level, or has things loose. The other day, I saw a tiny cabbage, and I was like, whoever engineered this to be tiny is very smart, because when was the last time you needed a whole head of cabbage? What were you doing? Maybe making cole slaw for a barbecue or something like that, or a picnic. But 99 percent of the time, you do not need that much cabbage for a family stir fry. And you can inform yourself, as a shopper, as to where and what works for you. I think we just look for the thing in the package, and that’s it. Spinach, for example, the washed convenient spinach—amazing, but a lot of that ends up going bad simply because it gets left in the bag in the crisper drawer. But if you buy loose spinach, or if you buy spinach that’s bundled and not washed, you can control the spoilage of it just a little bit better.

As far as protein goes, protein is something I will do my absolute best never to waste, and that’s because it takes so many resources in order to make protein happen. At least in my house, we rarely ever let any sort of meat or fish or anything go to waste. We pound it or freeze it or vacuum seal it—that’s another thing. I have no idea why your household comes with a microwave that can radiate something, blast it to the moon, and we don’t have vacuum sealers built into our house. One simple, US$800 appliance has saved me so much, so much in spoilage waste. Things freeze better, you never get freezer burn, so on and so forth. I could go on and on about how glorious a good vacuum sealer is.

There’s also not enough knowledge on how to prepare things. So people make food, it comes out bad, and they throw it away. I think that’s another source of wastage. People don’t love what they created. Which is weird, because cooking is, at least in my opinion, an art that we all have three opportunities to practice every day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), if not more. I think half of waste and spoilage is simply about respect, and respect for your time, and respect for the ingredients and the people who brought them to you. But look at our country. Obviously, respect is an issue.

FT: Most people know you from Food Network, where you’ve judged and competed on several different shows. What kind of discussions, if any, do competitors, other judges, or producers have about sustainability and/or food waste, especially for big-scale competition shows that have so many ingredients on hand?

JW: Yeah, absolutely. So for example, Guy’s Grocery Games—people ask me, is all that food real? Yeah, it is all real. Well, how do they do that? What happens? How do they keep a massive meat section going and it doesn’t go bad? Well, every couple of shows, they simply clear out the things that have a potential to spoil, and they straight-up give it to a local shelter. They compost everything. It is the most insane operation. And the amount of care and time they put into it—it’s definitely the greenest set that I’ve ever worked on.

And in general, here’s the thing: The reason that we’re making television is because we’re super passionate about it. There’s a reason I don’t play or commentate on lacrosse, and that’s because I don’t know anything about it. So you would hope that if we’re going to be enthusiastic enough to get on TV, we’d be enthusiastic about all the issues surrounding it. We all try our hardest not to mess things up. When you’re making a dish in 30 minutes or less and you’ve got a big red clock on your head, maybe I’m not going to take the time to put the apple core into a smoothie. But that being said, I at least know that on that set, they’re going to compost it. And nothing goes to waste.

Half the crew ends up eating the food that we make for camera. I can’t speak for all sets, but most of the ones I’ve been on are super sustainable. They try to break as few eggs as possible to make omelette, so to speak.