Plant-Based Education
Eat for
the Planet
Eat for the Planet is a Saving the Seas education initiative that connects dietary choices to public health and environmental sustainability.
What You Eat Impacts Our Planet
Eat for the Planet teaches communities how everyday food choices shape the climate, the land, and the ocean, and gives people practical ways to eat in line with that knowledge. Through classes, farm-to-table events, and community partnerships, the program makes whole food plant-based eating accessible, informed, and rooted in the places where people live.
Every meal has a supply chain, and that chain begins on land. Livestock require large areas for grazing and for growing feed, and producing that feed takes fuel, fertilizer, and water. Excess fertilizer and manure wash from farms into streams and rivers, travel downstream, and reach coastal waters, where nutrient overload depletes oxygen and harms marine life. Because these pressures start in the food system, changes in what people eat reduce them at the source.
The data links what we grow and eat to the health of our planet:
-
75%
Less farmland needed
A global shift to diets without animal products could cut farmland use by more than 75 percent, an area equal to the United States, China, the EU, and Australia combined, while still feeding the world.
-
57% vs. 29%
Share of food production emissions
Animal-based foods, including livestock feed, produce 57 percent of food production emissions, compared with 29 percent for plant-based foods.
-
Almost 90%
Of global deforestation
Agricultural expansion drives almost 90 percent of global deforestation, and in South America, livestock grazing accounts for nearly three-quarters of it.
-
4,755 sq. miles
Gulf of Mexico dead zone, five-year average
This is more than twice the 2035 target of 1,900 square miles. The nutrient pollution behind it comes primarily from agricultural and developed land runoff in the Mississippi River watershed.
-
35%+
Of marine fish stocks are overfished
The FAO reports that 35.5 percent of marine fish stocks are overfished, and the share has been rising by about 1 percent per year.
-
46%
Of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is fishing nets
At least 46 percent of its mass is made up of fishing nets.
...and the list goes on.
What We Do
Eat for the Planet brings plant-based nutrition education and community food experiences together in one program, led by a certified plant-based nutrition professional and in partnership with Plant Based Treaty.
Plant-Based Academy
Courses and workshops in whole food plant-based nutrition for individuals, schools, and community organizations.
Farm-to-Table Events
Community gatherings built around plant-based education and featuring produce grown at NATIV SPACE, our Roots to Reefs chapter in Clermont, Florida.
Community Meal Access
A developing initiative to bring plant-based meals to community members in need.
Eat for the Planet is directed by Elle Jimenez, founder of Saving the Seas, plant-based chef, and graduate of the plant-based nutrition certification program at the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies.
Programming is delivered through MERVANA Wellness, which hosts community wellness events and plant-based nutrition education, and through our land conservation chapter, NATIV SPACE, where the garden and food forest is intended to supply ingredients for program events.
Saving the Seas partners with Plant Based Treaty, an international grassroots campaign modeled on the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. The campaign calls for an end to the expansion of animal agriculture and a transition toward plant-based food systems.
