Climate-Friendly Summer Cookouts

Summer is a popular time for the classic cookout: fire up the grill, throw on some burger patties and hot dogs, pop open a cold beverage and enjoy the slow season with friends and family.

According to Project Drawdown, a leading resource for global climate solutions, Plant-Rich Diets is the number two climate solution for keeping global warming within a rise of two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, the number one solution being Reduced Food Waste.

Plant-rich is not the same as plant-based. A plant-based diet is often used interchangeably with vegan. Adopting a plant-rich diet means opting for smaller portions of animal proteins, swapping plant-based proteins for some of your traditionally meat- and dairy-based proteins, and generally increasing the volume of plants on your plate.

Framing the adoption of a plant-rich diet as “eating more fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes” makes the task sound more exciting than daunting! Some tips and resources to help shift your diet plant-forward can be found below.

The solutions compiled by Project Drawdown are ranked based on the global projected greenhouse gas emissions averted if the solution were adopted. Among the top 25 solutions, 14 are related to land use, food, agriculture or land sinks. Plant-rich diets are a solution to the emissions associated with animal agriculture. Half of the world’s non-ice, non-desert land is used for animal agriculture. It takes about 100 times more land to produce a gram of protein from beef than it does a gram of protein from peas or soy.

In 2022, Americans consumed 59.1 pounds of beef per capita, which is almost triple the 2021 global consumption of 20.6 pounds of beef per capita. Halving Americans’ animal protein consumption would prevent over 1.6 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution over the course of a decade. That’s roughly the equivalent of taking 350 million passenger vehicles off the road.

Resources for enjoying a plant-rich diet:

Alternative, or “fake,” meats will often satisfy a meat craving, but should be consumed occasionally as part of a balanced diet, as they tend to have higher sodium content and are generally highly processed.
Nature offers some great “meaty” plants that can be thrown on the grill, like mushrooms and eggplant, or processed into protein-packed patties (here’s a gluten-free version).
Here are some tips for adding more vegetables into an omnivorous diet.
Sign up for the New York Times’ Cooking newsletter, The Veggie (you can sign up for a free NYTimes subscription through WashU Libraries).
This is supposedly the world’s largest collection of vegetarian recipes.
If you want more personalized education like virtual cooking classes, check out local Center for Plant-based Living.
WashU hosts a weekly farmers market on the Medical Campus every Thursday from 10 AM to 2 PM where you can find fresh and local produce as well as prepared foods.
If it’s overwhelming to think about what type of produce to buy, sign up for WashU’s Community Supported Agriculture program. You will receive a weekly or bi-weekly box of local and seasonal produce and pre-packed meals, based on the package you select. Boxes are delivered on a weekly basis to a drop-off site on the West, Danforth, and Medical Campuses.