Food Ethics Made Easy: Two Simple Strategies for More Ethical Eating

Created by Anne Barnhill, Nicole Civita, Claire Davis, and Cara Wychgram

Do you want to buy food that’s good for you and the planet, but aren’t sure where to start?

Do you worry about how farm animals are treated, but love the taste of a beef hamburger?

Have you heard that “eco-certified” foods are better, but you can’t stomach the cost?

This website gives you simple strategies for eating more ethically without spending more money or much more time. We know that many people care about making the food system better but have very busy lives and/or need to stick to a tight budget when feeding their families. 

To eat more sustainably, humanely, and overall more ethically, follow these two simple principles when you make food choices: Waste Less Food and Favor Plant-Based Food. 

The Two Strategies are not a recipe for ethical perfection. There are many ethical problems in the food system that the Two Strategies don’t address head-on, such as farm laborers working in unsafe conditions for inadequate pay, or junk food harming public health. But if widely followed, the Two Strategies would make significant progress on multiple ethical problems in the food system. 

So rather than getting mired in complexities or paralyzed by the pursuit of perfection, we offer two simple strategies to help make your diet significantly more ethical. Our Two Strategies are straightforward, actionable, and adaptable to many different budgets and lifestyles.

Simple Strategies

Your time and money are precious. If you don’t have much energy or money to change how you eat, but you’re worried about the food system, its negative impacts, and your role in it, this website is for you. 

Our Two Strategies are simple rules that you can follow without much effort. You don’t need to shop at farmers markets or special grocery stores. You don’t need to buy extremely expensive foods festooned with labels that sound nice but are difficult to decode. You don’t have to hunt for detailed information about the foods you buy. 

No local? No organic? No obsessive label reading? Well, no… not unless you want to get involved with those things. There are countless ways to get more deeply involved in improving the food system and we have advice about that, too. But, first and foremost, we focus on two “if-you-do-nothing-else” kinds of strategies that are straightforward and effective. 

We’ve boiled down the information on this website so that it’s accessible, actionable, and easy to make your way through. But if you are the kind of person who wants to check the sources behind these recommendations, we’ve gathered citations to peer reviewed literature. Dig in!