After tracking my meals for this past week, I have noticed that my main food items are:

-Earl grey tea

-Oatmeal

-Milk

-Whole wheat bread

-Various type of meat

-Cliff bar

-Peanutbutter

-Sugar

Sugar: I use quite a bit of sugar between my oatmeal and my tea so I decided that it would be an easy item to replace in order to decrease my footprint. The average water footprint of sugar is 1782litre/kg but I have discovered that I could replace cane sugar with beet sugar. Beet sugar uses 920litre/kg, this is a decrease of 862litre/kg.

Bread: I noticed that on average I eat two slices of bread per day. Bread takes up about 3178 litre/kg of water so I will cut bread out of my diet and replace my lunch with salad containing lettuce (15gallons/ pound), tomatoes (22gallons/ pound), cucumber (28gallons/ pound) and strawberries (33gallons/ pound).

Meat: I noticed that I eat many different types of meat but they were not necessary for my meals so I will remove them completely from my diet. (pork 5988litre/ kg, chicken 4325litre/ kg)

Eggs: On average I eat about half a dozen eggs per week and each egg produces around 52 gallons of water. I will replace some of the eggs with a salad made from the fruits and veggies that have a small water footprint.

I am in the process of switching the foods I currently have with the replacements. Over thanksgiving I was unable to stick with these changes but i have successfully removed most bread and i have removed some meat from my dinners.

These first two weeks of the EcoAction project have been a bit more challenging than I anticipated, in terms of changing my diet and feeling like I’m making a measurable impact. As a group we decided to completely eliminate from our diets the top five foods with the biggest water footprints. For me, those are:

• Chicken
• Eggs
• Yogurt
• Nuts
• Chocolate

It was surprising to find out the amount of water required to produce the food I eat- I knew meat had a huge water footprint but somehow didn’t make the connection that eggs would as well, and definitely didn’t think chocolate had such a high water footprint.

Giving up these foods that I really enjoy and that are so readily available has been tough, especially considering that I used to eat eggs and nuts and chocolate every single day. I’ve ended up eating more granola and fruit for breakfast instead of eggs, and more vegetable snacks like bell peppers instead of nuts. And I’m definitely eating more garbanzo beans now that I’m not eating meat. However, it hasn’t been too difficult to adjust to these changes, and I think it will only get easier as time goes by.

I think the hardest part about our project is that we’re trying to reduce something we consume indirectly, and consequently we can’t see our impact. I have to keep reminding myself that my food choices do make a difference along the whole line of production and that those choices add up enormously over time. But it’s sometimes hard to know that intuitively.

After our baseline week at the start of the project, I’ve been focusing cutting back on  on a few main foods to reduce the water foot print of my diet. They are:

• Cheese
• Chocolate
• Almonds and cashews (and groundnuts, but I have a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard that I opened before the project so I have been eating some of that!)
• Yogurt
• Eggs

All of the above foods have a relatively high rate of  water used in production per kilo calorie (Source: Waterfootprint.org). I am a vegetarian so that is why meat products are not on my list despite their very high water footprint. So far, the biggest challenge has been finding adequate protein sources, but fortunately tofu and pulses (black beans, lentils, etc.) are relatively water – friendly (Sources: Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2010), Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2011)).

Thanksgiving posed a particular challenge in finding a meal that was water footprint friendly; my typical turkey substitute of choice is a savory cheddar and peanut loaf (a bit odd, yes, but delicious with vegetable gravy and mashed potatoes!).

I found a nut free, vegan dish to try instead: these delicious Salisbury “Steak” Meatballs from one of my favorite recipe blogs, Connoisseurus Veg. They use chickpeas as a base and they are super affordable and easy to whip up. I paired them with mashed potatoes, vegetable gravy, roast yam, cranberry sauce and vegetarian friendly stuffing for a great Thanksgiving meal.