Behavioral Change Journal Blog

Ecological Behavioral Change Goal: eating meat only when I know it’s local.

Over the past few weeks I have made an effort to only eat meat when I know that it’s from a local source. I have not been completely successful, due to the inconvenience and honestly my own laziness, but I have definitely cut down on my non-local meat consumption, and consequently, on my meat consumption altogether.

Talking to others about what I was doing helped me to change my perception of myself, and to see myself as more environmentally concerned. Even when I would admit to others that I had not been completely successful at abstaining from non-local meat, I still felt a sense of myself as environmentally conscious when I heard myself describing this goal that affects my daily life.

My parents were in town this past week, and when they asked me why I was doing this, and for the first time I had to explain it to a non-academic audience, it made me realize how much I don’t actually know about the reasons for doing this. I felt like a fraud, but in a way that just made me laugh at myself. I am used to being around people here in academia and in the liberal culture of Ithaca who don’t request an explanation because they have been indoctrinated with the reasons. And the main reason I chose to take on this goal in the first place is because of people whom I respect who were doing it, so I automatically assumed that it was something I should do too. I know many of the reasons on a basic level, but having to explain it to someone who knew absolutely nothing about it really made it clear how much more I should familiarize myself with the issue.

I had hoped that the changes I wanted to make to my diet would naturally influence my husband’s dietary choices as well, thereby creating a supportive and encouraging situation for us to motivate each other. However, while he has undoubtedly tried to help me with my goal by buying more non-meat choices for me, I haven’t noticed a big decline in his own non-local-meat consumption. It has made it very easy for me to “cheat” on my diet when he brings home a pepperoni pizza with pepperoni from who knows how far away.

I have tried to motivate myself with some prompts. I put a bumper sticker from Olivia’s Restaurant that says “Local Meat” on my refrigerator, and a little sign I printed out from the “100 Mile Diet” website that has the little bunny in the city saying “Why Eat Local” to remind myself to find out more about why I am doing this – which helps in those moments of weakness when I am hungry for meat even if I’m pretty sure it’s not local.

Social Change Goal(s):
- connecting the Ithaca Children’s Garden to a Cornell grant
and/or
- connecting our class to sustainable-themed films

After speaking with Harriet Becker, a co-founder of the Ithaca Children’s Garden, and hearing that they have been hoping to collaborate with a Cornell research project in order to get more secure (and sustainable!) funding, I realized I might be able to act as a bridge and connect her with a professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Ardyth Gillespie, whom I worked with over the summer. Much of the work I did on the research team with Ardyth over the summer involved efforts to stem the rising tide of childhood obesity, and hearing about the projects at ICG such as their salad garden sounded like a perfect opportunity for collaboration. I have been talking to Harriet about this and she is putting together some ideas they would like me to take to Ardyth.

In the meantime, I am also trying to coordinate with either the CRP film series or Cornell Roots and Shoots to show a couple of films that have really influenced me on the theme of sustainable design that I’d like to share with our class. Thanks to suggestions from people in the class, instead of starting my own project which would have not had nearly as much potential for success as attaching on to something already in the works like the CRP group or Roots and Shoots. So far I haven’t been able to reach anyone from Roots and Shoots, but I have been corresponding with a really helpful girl named Sarah with the CRP group and she seems just as interested as I am in working together! Maya in our class emailed me right after class with Sarah’s contact information. Without the opportunity to discuss my social change ideas and difficulties in class, I don’t think I would have made any progress so far. I just love this evidence of everything we are reading and talking about; that sustainable change thrives with supportive community involvement!