If the Rio Olympics’ greatest problem was to construct infrastructure from floor up and Tokyo needed to deal with a virus decimating sporting occasions, Paris 2024 has chosen to go to battle towards an integral element of the French lifestyle – its meals.
At Paris, athletes, employees and media personnel will likely be served an in depth Video games Village menu, however with a restricted unfold of what the nation is finest identified for – its meat, cheese and dairy merchandise. The transfer comes from a want to cut back animal protein consumption and carbon footprint.
When the Video games had been awarded to Paris, one of many key components within the choice was environmental considerations. With a lot of the sporting infrastructure in place, the one new venue developed for the Olympics was an Aquatics Centre at Saint-Denis. That corridor is solar-powered, created from recycled and bio-based constructing materials.
Paris has an bold plan for curbing its carbon footprint – they’re estimating a carbon footprint of 1.58 million metric tons of CO2, lower than that of the Covid-hit Tokyo Olympics (1.96 million metric tons of CO2). London 2012 had a CO2 emission of three.4 million metric tons.
Constructing new venues is what drastically will increase emissions. The organisers additionally satisfied 4 contingents (the Netherlands, Britain, Belgium and Switzerland) to journey through prepare to Paris and is requesting guests from the continent to do the identical. There’s a strong public transport system and bicycles can be found for native journey. However the greatest change is the discount in animal protein consumption.
However why meals? And notably, why animal protein?
In accordance with the Meals and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, livestock farming – the act of rising cattle for meals – contributes to fifteen p.c of world greenhouse emissions and basically places animal protein in the identical bracket because the transport business. The World Financial Discussion board’s World Dangers Report 2024 says that when a big group of individuals eat plant-based meals, make use of sustainable public transport for journey and make environment- pleasant selections, it forces companies to cater to altering tendencies.
In accordance with estimates, the Olympic Video games Village will put together 13 million meals and snacks. The Worldwide Olympic Committee says 60 p.c of them will likely be plant-based choices. The goal is 1 kilogram of CO2 per meal – half of the norm at earlier Olympic Video games.
It goals to satisfy that focus on by together with extra fruit and veggies whereas additionally utilizing seasonal and native produce (with a view to cease extreme transport of meals, France intends to supply 80 p.c of components from throughout the nation).
Predominantly meat-based France
On a day-to-day foundation, veganism isn’t the predominant meals selection in France. The worldwide common meat consumption is estimated to be 28.1 kg per capita yearly. In France, that quantity shoots as much as 83.5 kg.
Altering meals habits has been powerful. Till 2022, the nation had one Michelin star restaurant that was vegan – it shut down inside a yr. A method wherein the Paris Olympics has tried to deal with this concern is by finalising a menu based mostly on 4 geographical areas (France, Asia, African-Caribbean, World), with 40 totally different meals on supply every single day.
A few of these meal choices are ‘Veggie Bourguignon’, ‘Cauliflower and baked potato with turmeric’ (a attainable French variant of the common-or-garden Aloo gobhi), ‘Bell pepper, onion, tomato and pepper stir fry’ and ‘Veggie Moussaka’.
At La Concorde, the place the three×3 Basketball, Breaking, BMX Freestyle and Skateboarding occasions are set to happen, all meals offered will likely be vegetarian. “We needed to concentrate on vegetarian choices,” mentioned Philipp Würz, who’s liable for meals & drinks at Paris 2024. “60 p.c of the recipes for most of the people will likely be vegetarian. We’re satisfied that with these Video games, we have now a singular alternative to do issues in another way and present that one other mannequin is feasible.”