My Meals Environmental Impacts
My meal items will be from a Culvers famous butterburger. Recently culvers was deemed the healthiest fast-food burger in Wisconsin! Let's look into how their beef patty and wheat bun impact our environment. Culvers sources beef from U.S. producers mostly from states in the Midwest, where large-scale cattle ranching occurs. The wheat, again from Midwest farms, is eventually milled and baked into buns at commercial bakeries. Producing 1lb of beef can require up to 2,000 gallons of water, which is used for growing feed and for the cattle's hydration. However large scale cattle farming contributes to overgrazing, degrading soil quality. Feedlots can lead to soil and water pollution form the manure runoff. Feed crop monocultures reduce plant and insect diversity, as well as land conversion for ranching fragments wildlife habitats. As for wheat production, wheat requires less water than beef, about 1,000 gallons per pound. Conventional wheat farming of...