Food is the essence of life. It fuels us, brings us together, and connects communities to their cultures. It can even be the way to someone’s heart. What and how we eat is also crucial in the battle to sustain our lives — and all life — on this planet.

Across our rapidly warming globe, people are reimagining food pathways and offering visions of a world where what we eat sustains both us and our ecosystems, where everyone has access to the sustenance they need, and where our diets adapt to a changing climate and help mitigate it.

Art by Lily Lambie-Kiernan

by GRIST STAFF

The Climate Future Cookbook

In this cookbook, we explore that future through eight foods that show what sustainable, resilient eating could look like.

From sustainable proteins to plants that are restoring native ecosystems to crops that can grow even in harsh drought conditions, these climate-friendly foods offer a taste of a brighter future — and a way to bring that future into your kitchen right now.

Algae

Precision fermented dairy

Perennial wheat

Pawpaw

Lionfish

Crickets

Collard greens

Camas

This highly adaptable single-celled organism doesn’t need fresh water to thrive

Recipe courtesy of We Are the New Farmers

Algae

As the climate shifts and both water and arable land become increasingly scarce, raising conventional crops will grow ever more difficult. Algae, including the edible spirulina, can do something other crops cannot: grow without fresh water — or soil.  Algae farmer Jonas Guenther describes it as “a crop for people who want to turn climate-stressed land into more productive, more resilient forms of agriculture.”

Veggie spirulina meatballs

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This once-prevalent root vegetable reveals a path to restoring native ecosystems

Recipe courtesy of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe

Camas

In the Pacific Northwest, camas, a flowering plant with a starchy bulb, was once a key carbohydrate in the diets of Indigenous peoples. But camas and the prairies that supported it have vanished.  Today, tribes like the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe of Sequim, Washington, are reintroducing camas and other native food plants, and restoring the land-management practices that helped them flourish. This recipe uses foraged camas. Try making it with sunchoke, a more widely available, inulin-based root vegetable that is also native to North America.

Twice-cooked camas (or sunchoke)

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How urban farms can reconnect city dwellers to their food and their communities

Recipe courtesy of Yeawa Asabi

Collard Greens

In a world where many of us live at a literal and metaphorical distance from the food we consume and the land where it’s grown, urban farms and gardens provide one space for reconnection, while producing seasonal, organic food close to home.  At Yes Farm, an urban farm and co-op in Seattle, for example, Black land, food, community, and connection take center stage through meaningful crops like the symbiotic Three Sisters, and collard greens. “Tending the plants has helped me tend myself,” says farm manager Hannah Wilson, “and because I have more food, I can care for others more.”

Easy seasoned collard greens

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Insects can be a sustainable alternative to animal protein — for your pets, too

Crickets

Humans can lessen our climate impact by reducing meat consumption, which could include switching to protein-rich, mega-efficient insects. But if you can’t imagine eating crickets, think about another member of your household who might: your pet.  In the United States, dogs and cats consume about 25 percent of the calories derived from livestock. If all those pets were a country, it would rank fifth in the world in meat consumption, and insect-based food and treats are emerging as one way to make a climate-friendly swap for our furry friends.

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Peanut butter, banana, and cricket smoothie

Eating this invasive fish species could help protect the ecosystems it’s ravaging

Recipe courtesy of Brotula’s Seafood House and Steamer

Lionfish

Climate change is creating conditions that allow nonnative species to spread into new ecosystems. Warming seas have allowed lionfish, for example, which have wreaked havoc on Florida’s coastline, to migrate as far north as Rhode Island during the summer. Putting them on dinner plates as a replacement for other, less prevalent species, could be one way to help mitigate their impact on Florida’s reefs and ease pressure on overfished species like snapper and halibut.  As one NOAA scientist puts it, “We want to fish them unsustainably, in a way, for conservation purposes.”

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Pan-seared lionfish with forbidden rice

Food-bearing trees in urban neighborhoods can turn planting trees into a two-for-one climate solution

Recipe courtesy of Jose R. Spellman-Lopez, a Philadelphia-based urban farmer and educator

Pawpaw

Twelve percent of U.S. households are food insecure. The neighborhoods most impacted by food insecurity and poor nutritional options also typically have far fewer trees and green spaces, leaving them with poor air quality and hotter summers.  In Philadelphia, local communities and city officials are using tree-planting programs to not only improve shade cover, but also bring food-bearing trees, like the hearty pawpaw, to frontline neighborhoods. Philly has transformed schoolyards, parks — even empty lots — into bountiful orchards that show one path toward alleviating food insecurity and nourishing communities.

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Fermented Pawpaw Hot Sauce

This climate-resilient version of a dietary staple nourishes the land it grows on

Recipe courtesy of Claire Wineman

Perennial wheat

Conventional agriculture uses annual crops, which must be replanted each year, requiring frequent tilling of the soil — a process that releases stored carbon and destroys the ecosystems within. Perennial crops, on the other hand, continue growing year after year, contributing to a rich soil ecosystem that sequesters vast amounts of carbon and makes farmland more resistant to erosion, flooding, and other climate impacts. The perennial grain Kernza is already commercially available, and experiments are underway to develop a perennial wheat that can match the yields of the annual variety.

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Mushroom quiche with perennial wheat crust

Scientists have found a way to make real dairy by milking microbes instead of cows

Precision fermented dairy

Dairy cows, like beef cattle, have colossal carbon and methane footprints. One rising solution is precision fermentation, a process primarily used to produce insulin and vitamins, which can create key milk proteins by brewing specially programmed yeast and fungi.  That whey and casein can then be used to make milk, cheese, and other dairy products, generating fewer emissions and less waste. It’s a particularly powerful possibility for cheese, which is notoriously less tasty as a vegan product, and which requires more water per pound than beef or lamb.

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Insalata caprese with ‘moo-less’ mozzarella

Download a tasty collection of climate-friendly recipes compliments of Grist and our friends at Cool Beans and Pale Blue Tart!

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