Can you create a rainbow in the kitchen?

It may be dark and stormy outside, but your challenge this week is to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by creating a rainbow in the kitchen! Can you get creative with different coloured seasonal vegetables and make some rainbow kebabs? … a roast vegetable rainbow? … a full spectrum stir-fry? … or maybe some rainbow veggie sticks to go with your favourite dip?

By being adventurous and trying to eat more plant-based foods such as wholegrains, pulses and vegetables, we can make a big difference to the amount of greenhouse gases we cause to be emitted whilst still getting enough of the protein, calcium and iron our bodies need.

Last year, scientists based at the University of Oxford carried out the biggest ever study of the environmental impact of different sorts of food. It was based on 40,000 farms in 119 countries. Can you guess which foods contributed most to climate change per serving?  Beef, lamb, farmed fish and prawns, pork and chicken. Does this list surprise you? Can you think why meat and fish-farming have such a high impact?

Don’t forget to HIT THE RED BUTTON when you've created that rainbow in your kitchen!

Cows and sheep produce lots of methane when they burp and they also need lots of land … a third of the crops we grow are to feed animals, and this farmland sometimes replaces forests and destroys habitats. Fish-farming also produces lots of methane as fish poo and uneaten fish food gathers at the bottom of ponds where there is barely any oxygen, making it the perfect environment for methane to be produced.  Methane is a really powerful greenhouse gas – its impact on climate change is around 34 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

If you’d like to find out more about which foods contribute most to climate change you can click https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714 to try out the BBC’s ‘climate change food calculator’. Maybe you can have a go while you are waiting for your rainbow veggies to cook??

Don’t forget to HIT THE RED BUTTON when you have cooked up a rainbow!