An entry by Chef Nam
In my daily work as an F&B business owner, I have noticed that more and more people are choosing to eat less meat for various reasons, such as personal health concerns and the environmental impact on animal agriculture. I really don’t want to talk about saving mother earth or the end of mother earth stuff. I would not call myself an environmentalist either.
In my article “Sustainable Eating” back on August 5, 2019, it’s important to be conscious about what we eat as this will indirectly impact our planet. The question is always, can I eat well without sinking the planet? Is there any ingredients or food somewhere in the world that is healthy both for us and for the planet we live in?
For these reasons, I will be introducing a new product to our upcoming new menu, based on plant-based protein, namely “THE IMPOSSIBLE ™”. We don’t want to tell people what to eat, but with our new PHO IMPOSSIBLE ™, DRY BRAISED IMPOSSIBLE ™ YELLOW NOODLE AND BANH MI IMPOSSIBLE ™, we give you an opportunity to go meat-free “one day a week” and help you gradually shift away from meat-heavy diets. It would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in wealthy countries consumed less meat. I am particularly concerned about the accelerating rate of deforestation, climate change which is expected to make things worse.
Today, I am aware that deforestation makes way for livestock, along with methane emissions from cows and fertilizer used, creating much greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, it could turn much of the remaining forests, particularly the Amazon into a degraded type of desert, and could further release a billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. It is a fact and that’s very worrying.
