̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - processed meat

Changing global diets is vital to reducing climate change

fpjl2 — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 08:34:13 +0000

A new study, published today in Nature Climate Change, suggests that – if current trends continue – food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2050.

̽��ֱ��study’s authors say we should all think carefully about the food we choose and its environmental impact. A shift to healthier diets across the world is just one of a number of actions that need to be taken to avoid dangerous climate change and ensure there is enough food for all.

As populations rise and global tastes shift towards meat-heavy Western diets, increasing agricultural yields will not meet projected food demands of what is expected to be 9.6 billion people - making it necessary to bring more land into cultivation.

This will come at a high price, warn the authors, as the deforestation will increase carbon emissions as well as biodiversity loss, and increased livestock production will raise methane levels. They argue that current food demand trends must change through reducing waste and encouraging balanced diets.

If we maintain ‘business as usual’, say the authors, then by 2050 cropland will have expanded by 42% and fertiliser use increased sharply by 45% over 2009 levels. A further tenth of the world’s pristine tropical forests would disappear over the next 35 years.

̽��ֱ��study shows that increased deforestation, fertilizer use and livestock methane emissions are likely to cause GHG from food production to increase by almost 80%. This will put emissions from food production alone roughly equal to the target greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 for the entire global economy.

̽��ֱ��study’s authors write that halving the amount of food waste and managing demand for particularly environmentally-damaging food products by changing global diets should be key aims that, if achieved, might mitigate some of the greenhouse gases causing climate change.

“There are basic laws of biophysics that we cannot evade,” said lead researcher Bojana Bajzelj from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who authored the study with colleagues from Cambridge’s departments of Geography and Plant Sciences as well as the ̽��ֱ�� of Aberdeen's Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences.

“ ̽��ֱ��average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3%, and as we eat more meat, more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals that provide meat for humans. ̽��ֱ��losses at each stage are large, and as humans globally eat more and more meat, conversion from plants to food becomes less and less efficient, driving agricultural expansion and land cover conversion, and releasing more greenhouse gases. Agricultural practices are not necessarily at fault here – but our choice of food is,” said Bajzelj.

“It is imperative to find ways to achieve global food security without expanding crop or pastureland. Food production is a main driver of biodiversity loss and a large contributor to climate change and pollution, so our food choices matter.”

̽��ֱ��team analysed evidence such as land use, land suitability and agricultural biomass data to create a robust model that compares different scenarios for 2050, including scenarios based on maintaining current trends.

One scenario investigated by the team is on the supply side: the closing of ‘yield gaps’. Gaps between crop yields achieved in ‘best practice’ farming and the actual average yields exist all over the world, but are widest in developing countries – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. ̽��ֱ��researchers say that closing these gaps through sustainable intensification of farming should be actively pursued.

But even with the yield gaps closed, projected food demand will still require additional land – so the impact on GHG emissions and biodiversity remains. Bajzelj points out that higher yields will also require more mineral fertiliser use and increased water demand for irrigation.

Food waste, another scenario analysed by the team, occurs at all stages in the food chain. In developing countries, poor storage and transportation cause waste; in the west, wasteful consumption is rife. “ ̽��ֱ��latter is in many ways worse because the wasted food products have already undergone various transformations that require input of other resources, especially energy,” said Bajzelj.

Yield gap closure alone still showed a greenhouse gas increase of just over 40% by 2050. Closing yield gaps and halving food waste still showed a small increase of 2% in greenhouse gas emissions. When healthy diets were added, the model suggests that all three measures combined result in agricultural GHG levels almost halving from their 2009 level – dropping 48%.

“Western diets are increasingly characterised by excessive consumption of food, including that of emission-intensive meat and dairy products. We tested a scenario where all countries were assumed to achieve an average balanced diet - without excessive consumption of sugars, fats, and meat products. This significantly reduced the pressures on the environment even further,” said the team.

̽��ֱ��‘average’ balanced diet used in the study is a relatively achievable goal for most. For example, the figures included two 85g portions of red meat and five eggs per week, as well as a portion of poultry a day.

“This is not a radical vegetarian argument; it is an argument about eating meat in sensible amounts as part of healthy, balanced diets,” said Cambridge co-author Prof Keith Richards. “Managing the demand better, for example by focusing on health education, would bring double benefits – maintaining healthy populations, and greatly reducing critical pressures on the environment.”

Co-author Prof Pete Smith from the ̽��ֱ�� of Aberdeen said: “unless we make some serious changes in food consumption trends, we would have to completely de-carbonise the energy and industry sectors to stay within emissions budgets that avoid dangerous climate change. That is practically impossible – so, as well as encouraging sustainable agriculture, we need to re-think what we eat.”

“Cutting food waste and moderating meat consumption in more balanced diets, are the essential ‘no-regrets’ options,” added Bajzelj.

Inset image: cattle_feedlot_09 by NDSU Ag Communication (Att-NC-SA)

Healthier diets and reducing food waste are part of a combination of solutions needed to ensure food security and avoid dangerous climate change, say the team behind a new study.

Food production is a main driver of biodiversity loss and a large contributor to climate change and pollution, so our food choices matter

Bojana Bajzelj

Joshua Bousel

Fajitas. Banner image: ...eat meat! by James Vaughn

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Bovril: a very beefy (and British) love affair

amb206 — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 08:00:00 +0000

A century and a half ago, a revolution took place in the food industry. A boom in the urban population fuelled a need for the mass production of affordable, non-perishable foodstuffs sold in cans and jars. Advances in processing and manufacturing collided with a burgeoning interest in science: the result was the emergence of branded convenience foods, cleverly marketed as nourishing and nutritious.

Speaking tomorrow at the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, Lesley Steinitz will present a paper titled ‘Making Muscular Machines with Nitrogenous Nutrition: Bovril, Plasmon and Cadbury’s Cocoa’. In her discussion of what went into the building of these most stalwart of brands, Steinitz will address the question of how some of these products are so embedded in the public psyche that we go on buying them even when their grandiose claims have long been dropped.

Food is the stuff of life: the fortunes made in food manufacturing rely on the creation of narratives that tap into our deepest hopes and fears. ̽��ֱ��story of Bovril as the ultimate processed beef-based food is an example of brilliant marketing and myth-making – one that famously brings together notions of Britishness and beefiness into a bulbous bottle with a chunky red lid.

Some 130 years ago a Scotsman spotted a gap in the market. Tasked with supplying preserved beef from the ranches of North America for Napoleon III’s army, following their defeat due to starvation during the 1870/71 Siege of Paris, John Lawson Johnston saw the potential for a beef extract with added protein. He produced an extract made by heating carcasses of cattle and reducing the liquids that came off into a residue which was mixed with powdered dried meat. This substance, which Johnston believed was truly nutritious, overcame all the problems associated with the transportation of meat across thousands of miles of ocean.

As a brand that for decades stood the test of time and still boasts iconic status in the public imagination, Bovril encapsulated notions of health and energy, stamina and stoicism. Bovril is good for you. It helps to build healthy bodies. Bovril is what explorers drink to keep their spirits up when times are tough. It’s what your British granny gives you to sip when you’re recovering from a bug. Bovril makes your Sunday roast gravy dark and strong.

How did Johnston build his brand – and how did he create an image for a gloopy substance that has its own niche in the history of British food? Steinitz looks at the ways in which Johnston built a huge market for Bovril which is just one of the products covered by her wider study of industrial health foods and culture between 1880 and 1920. It was an era marked by a new decadence as an expanding sector of the population could afford new-style convenience foods while many worried about a reversal of Darwinian evolution towards the physical and moral degeneration of the human race, caused by the evils of industry, drink and squalor.

Steinitz explained: “ ̽��ֱ��practice of dietetics, eating the appropriate food to make you well, was a practice which stretched back to ancient times. Advances in the application of scientific know-how – especially chemistry – and technology opened up new possibilities for food processing and preservation and its transportation across massive distances. Many of the new food products – which often didn’t resemble anything you could make at home - were attached onto older dietetic practices and were promoted not for just their convenience, cost or flavour, but also because they were health-giving. One such food was Bovril.”

Bovril was an inspired name marrying together meat, myth and magic: the first part of the word ‘bo’ borrowed from bovine and the second part ‘vril’ from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s science fiction novel, ̽��ֱ��Coming Race, in which the Vril-ya were an underground people with awesome electrical powers.

“From the start, Bovril was heavily advertised through campaigns that tapped into the mood of the public quite brilliantly. It was British and the company worked hard to make sure it was a food of choice of the army – it was patriotic and nutritious. Advertising featured pictures of bulls: the strongest of beasts, whose meat turned British men into the strongest and smartest in Europe. Essentially Bovril was imagined as a bull in a bottle. In this way, the advertising of Bovril is strikingly different to the advertising of meat products today which rarely if ever carry images of animals,” said Steinitz.

Advertising connected Bovril to the fashionable and popular physical culture movement by getting sporting celebrities to endorse the brand. One of these, the world’s strongest man at the turn of the 20th century, an Adonis-like star called Eugen Sandow, had developed his rippling muscles so that his body resembled a classical sculpture which he showed off to enormous crowds in the music halls. In the 1910s Bovril was also marketed as a highly advanced, scientific beverage that had been shown in experiments to boost the weight, assumed to be muscle mass, of humans and dogs.

̽��ֱ��scientific theories that surrounded Bovril linked it with electricity, another marvel of science that was changing people’s lives. “In the late Victorian era, there were many popular therapies that used electricity as a stimulant and tonic for nervous complaints and constipation,” said Steinitz. “Bovril also slotted into the temperance movement as a drink that was alcohol-free and yet not namby-pamby. It has a suitable dark, macho look and a meaty, macho smell.”

Advertising was only part of the story. ̽��ֱ��company needed to source beef extract and protein, which meant working with ranchers in South America and the Antipodes, with shipping lines and hundreds of retailers. It meant keeping the supply chain flowing to meet growing demand. In all these areas, the Bovril company was adept at building networks with people of influence. And on every level the company innovated, for example, purchasing machines and dynamos to automate the manufacture and packaging of up to 150,000 bottles of Bovril per day in Bovril’s state-of-the-art factory which opened in 1900 in the heart of London. Its directors were so proud of their factory that they hosted annual tours for doctors and nurses, of their ‘Temple of Sanitation'.

As Johnston used his commercial success and his newfound wealth to march up the social scale, he exploited his network of powerful contacts to generate orders for his product which went into the armed forces, hospitals and workhouses. This gave Bovril the credibility as a legitimate health food for people to buy it also for home use. Its markets crossed class boundaries and Bovril could be drunk any time of day or night. It could also be spread on toast or added to soups and stews. In the summer, the company tried to persuade consumers to drink it cold with soda!

̽��ֱ��product did however hit a few blips: Bovril had its own horse-meat scandals during the late 1800s, and in 1906 sales of Bovril dipped as result of public horror at the appalling human and animal conditions in the massive Chicago meat processing plants exposed by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s bestselling novel, ̽��ֱ��Jungle. More recently Bovril went beef-free for a period in response to concerns about BSE (mad cow disease).

Where is Bovril today? It’s still on the supermarket shelves but in many homes the squat black bottle slumbers at the back of the kitchen cupboard. ̽��ֱ��brand is owned by food giant Unilever and sales tick over at a modest pace – and inflated scientific claims for Bovril’s health-giving properties have long disappeared. “While Bovril used to be marketed as British using symbolism of beef and a bull, today its advertising taps into Britishness as symbolised by the National Trust and energetic outdoor pursuits in all weathers. But there is still something unshakable about our belief in British backbone from tasty Bovril,” said Steinitz. ̽��ֱ��black pot with the red lid lives on.

For more information about this story contact Alex Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk, 01223 761673

Top inset image: John Lawson Johnston

̽��ֱ��makers of the beef extract called Bovril were pioneers in the dark arts of marketing. Speaking tomorrow at the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� historian Lesley Steinitz will show how that famous black gloop won a cherished place in the heart of the nation.

Bovril slotted into the temperance movement as a drink that was alcohol-free but not namby-pamby. It has a dark, macho look and a meaty, macho smell.

Lesley Steinitz

Bovril - A meat flavoured monologue

Bovril marketing material

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