| Description | Stand up for the earth while you sit down to dinner: Understanding the connections between our food, climate change, and antibiotic resistance in the environment with Jenny Jay, UCLA
Globally, food systems–what we eat, where and how we grow it– play a major role in determining our impact on the environment. By considering our food choices, we can find “low hanging fruit” for reducing our “foodprint.” In fact, diet shifts hold great potential for helping us mitigate climate change! In addition, food system changes can help us address a suite of environmental challenges including biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution, and land use change. In this talk we will discuss the complex relationship between food and the environment, with particular emphasis on the carbon footprint of foods and the impacts of environmental antibiotic resistance on humans.
For the last eighteen years, Jennifer Jay has been a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California Los Angeles. She specializes in the fate and transport of chemical and microbial contaminants in the environment. Her research addresses a wide range of topics including coastal water quality, environmental proliferation of antibiotic resistance, and the role of environmental education in shifts toward diets with lower carbon footprints. Jennifer also directs the Center for Environmental Research and Community Engagement (CERCE), a UCLA Center that addresses community-based environmental research questions in under-served communities in Los Angeles. She founded Meals for the Planet (meals4planet.org), an organization with the goal of disseminating information on the connections between food and the environment. Jennifer earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
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