I’m standing in the produce aisle at Shaw’s last Tuesday, holding an avocado and doing math in my head. The woman next to me with the squeaky cart wheel keeps glancing over, probably wondering if I’m having some sort of breakdown. She’s not entirely wrong, I suppose. See, I’ve fallen down this rabbit hole about water footprints in our food, and now I can’t buy anything without thinking about all the water that went into producing it. That innocent-looking avocado? It took about 70 gallons of water to grow. The beef in the meat department over there? We’re talking about 1,800 gallons per pound. Makes you chew more thoughtfully, let me tell you.
This whole thing started about two years ago when my granddaughter Emma was working on a school project about water conservation. She asked me how much water I use in a day, and I gave her the obvious answer – showers, dishwashing, that sort of thing. But then she started reading me facts about “virtual water” – the hidden water in everything we consume. I’d never heard the term before, but apparently every bite of food carries this invisible water footprint from growing, processing, packaging, the whole nine yards.
Growing up in Worcester in the sixties, we weren’t thinking about water footprints, obviously. We were just trying to keep the grocery bill reasonable. My mother would have laughed at the idea of calculating water usage for different foods, but looking back, the way we ate then was probably a lot more water-efficient than how I lived for most of my adult life. Lots of vegetables from the backyard garden, meat maybe three times a week if we were lucky, hardly any processed foods because they were expensive. Waste wasn’t even a concept – you ate what was on your plate, period.
After Emma’s project got me curious, I started reading up on this virtual water business. The numbers are honestly mind-boggling when you start adding them up. That morning cup of coffee? About eight gallons of water went into growing those beans. A slice of bread uses up about ten gallons. But here’s where it gets really crazy – beef requires more water than anything else we commonly eat. We’re talking fifteen hundred to two thousand gallons per pound, depending on how it’s raised. I had to read that three times before it sank in.
The reason beef uses so much water isn’t just because cows drink a lot – though they do, about thirty to fifty gallons a day each. Most of that water footprint comes from growing all the corn and soybeans to feed them. Takes a tremendous amount of water to grow feed crops, then you add in water for processing and cleaning at slaughterhouses, and the numbers just balloon.
I used to buy ground beef pretty regularly – made a decent meatloaf, you know? But after learning about the water situation, I cut way back. Now I maybe buy it once a month for special occasions, and I try to get it from that farm stand on Route 9 where the cattle graze on actual grass instead of eating transported feed. Probably costs me three times as much, but I figure if I’m eating it less often, I can afford to buy better quality.
Other animal products aren’t quite as water-intensive, but they’re still up there. Pork uses about six hundred gallons per pound, chicken around four hundred gallons. Even eggs – which I thought would be pretty efficient – use about thirty-five gallons per dozen. Cheese is particularly tough because it takes a lot of milk to make a little cheese, so you’re looking at about five hundred gallons per pound of cheddar. Makes those expensive artisanal cheeses seem almost reasonable when you factor in the water cost.
This is probably why all those environmental articles keep pushing plant-based diets. The water savings are genuinely dramatic. But – and this surprised me – not all plant foods are created equal when it comes to water use. Some of them will shock you just as much as the beef numbers did.
Take almonds. California almonds, which is most of what we get here on the East Coast, use about a gallon of water per nut. Per nut! I read that and immediately felt guilty about all the almond milk I’d been buying because I thought it was more environmentally friendly than dairy. Turns out almond milk has its own water problems, especially when most almonds are grown in drought-prone areas of California.
Nuts in general tend to be pretty thirsty crops. Walnuts, pistachios, almonds – they all require substantial water. I didn’t give up nuts entirely, but I started buying them in smaller quantities and mixing up the types instead of just defaulting to almonds for everything. Found out hazelnuts use less water and grow well in rainier climates, so I switched to hazelnut butter for my occasional toast splurge.
Rice was another surprise. Uses about twice as much water as wheat to produce the same amount of food. Those flooded rice paddies require constant irrigation, though apparently some of that water gets recycled through the system. Still made me think twice about having rice with dinner several times a week like I used to.
On the positive side, most vegetables have pretty reasonable water footprints. Lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes – they’re generally under fifty gallons per pound, which seems almost quaint compared to the meat numbers. Apples are around twenty gallons per pound, bananas about thirty gallons. Even protein-rich beans and lentils, while higher than vegetables, come in at maybe one hundred to one hundred fifty gallons per pound – still a fraction of what animal proteins require.
I started keeping a mental list of lower-water foods and higher-water foods, not to be obsessive about it, but just to be more aware when I’m shopping. Seasonal vegetables from New England became the foundation of most meals. I eat a lot more beans than I used to – found some great recipes for lentil soup that even my late husband would have enjoyed, may he rest in peace.
But here’s where it gets complicated, and this took me months to understand properly. The total amount of water isn’t the whole story. There’s something called “green water” versus “blue water” that makes a huge difference. Green water is rainfall that naturally waters crops. Blue water is what gets pumped out of rivers and aquifers for irrigation.
From an environmental standpoint, green water is much less problematic because it’s not competing with other water needs. A crop might have a high total water footprint but if most of that is rainfall in an area that gets plenty of rain, it’s not necessarily straining water resources the way irrigated crops do in dry regions.
This is why I can’t just look at the total water numbers and make decisions. Those California almonds aren’t just using a lot of water – they’re using scarce water in a region that’s been dealing with serious droughts. Meanwhile, apples grown in Massachusetts might use rainwater and minimal irrigation, making them much more sustainable despite any water footprint calculations.
I started paying attention to where my food comes from, not just how much water it uses. The farmer’s market became my Saturday morning routine instead of just an occasional nice outing. I can actually ask the vendors about their watering practices, which feels good after months of trying to research everything online.
One farmer there – nice older gentleman who grows beautiful vegetables – told me he uses drip irrigation and collects rainwater, uses about half the water of conventional farming methods. His tomatoes cost more than Stop & Shop, but knowing they’re grown responsibly makes them taste better somehow. Maybe that’s silly, but at my age you appreciate these small satisfactions.
I’ve also gotten more strategic about my splurges. Instead of completely giving up higher-water foods I love, I treat them as occasional treats rather than everyday staples. Those avocados I was agonizing over in the produce aisle? I buy one maybe twice a month now instead of keeping them around constantly. When I do have one, I really enjoy it instead of mindlessly adding it to everything.
Same approach with nuts, out-of-season berries, that kind of thing. I’ll buy a small container of raspberries in January if I’m really craving them, but I try to focus on what’s naturally available locally most of the time. Turns out winter squash and root vegetables can be pretty satisfying when you learn how to cook them properly.
The biggest change has been reducing food waste. Learning about all the water embedded in food made me much more careful about buying only what I’ll actually use. I keep a “use first” section in my refrigerator now for things that need to get eaten soon. Plan meals around what’s about to go bad instead of just buying whatever looks appealing.
My trash output has dropped noticeably, and so have my grocery bills. Funny how being more environmentally conscious also saves money. My mother would have approved of that efficiency, though she’d probably laugh at me researching water footprints to arrive at habits she just took for granted.
I’ve learned to be flexible about this whole thing too. Perfect became the enemy of good pretty quickly when I first started down this path. Spent way too much time agonizing over whether oat milk or soy milk was more water-efficient, whether local honey was better than agave nectar from Mexico, that sort of thing. Had to step back and remember that any movement toward more sustainable eating is better than paralysis by analysis.
Some weeks I do better than others. Sometimes convenience wins out and I grab whatever’s easy. Had takeout Chinese food last week and didn’t even want to think about the water footprint of that mystery meat in the sweet and sour pork. But overall, understanding the water in my food has made me more conscious about what I eat and more appreciative of it.
The reality is that our food choices add up across millions of people to have real impacts on water resources around the world. Agriculture uses about seventy percent of all freshwater globally, and with more regions facing water shortages, what we choose to eat matters more than most of us realize.
I’m not trying to be preachy about any of this. Everyone’s got their own circumstances, their own health needs, their own family traditions around food. Water footprints are just one factor to consider alongside everything else that goes into feeding ourselves and our families.
But for me, learning about the water in my food has connected me to something larger than my own daily routine. Every meal feels like a small vote for the kind of world I want to leave for Emma and her generation. They’re the ones who’ll have to deal with whatever water situation we hand them, so the least I can do is think about it when I’m filling my shopping cart.
Now when I’m standing in that produce aisle doing water math in my head, I don’t feel quite so crazy about it. Maybe that woman with the squeaky cart could benefit from thinking about it too.
