For day 6 of her One Meal a Day for the Planet challenge, Oprah had a tasty and low carbon footprint oatmeal for breakfast.  Oatmeal is a great source of fiber, can lower cholesterol levels, and is filling, so it can help with weight maintenance.  Oats have also been shown to reduce blood sugar levels, especially for those with type two diabetes (Nazare et al. 2009; Tapola et al. 2005).  This recipe’s overall footprint is 222 g CO2eq per serving, with the oats, coconut milk, blueberries, banana and pineapple each contributing 80, 240, 74, 118, 164 g CO2eq.   If you made the oatmeal with whole milk and butter, the footprint would be 684 g CO2eq.

This recipe, by Oprah’s chef Raymond Weber can be found in Oprah ‘s food diary online- see link for Oprah Magazine.  Photo credit: Oprah Magazine.

 

The 30 day challenge was inspired by Suzy Cameron‘s new book The OMD Plan. Her book discusses that switching out one meat-based meal a day for a plant-based meal can make a huge difference to our environment! Every day we are seeing the impacts of #climate change—we have to do all we can to mitigate it.

 

Thanks to UCLA students Rachel Tsao and Yuhang Cai for their work on this post!

Carbon footprint data are from:

Heller, M.C. and G.A. Keoleian. 2014. Greenhouse gas emission estimates of U.S. dietary choices and food loss. Journal of Industrial Ecology.

 

Clune et al.  (2017) Systematic review of greenhouse gas emissions for different fresh food categories. J. Cleaner Production