Dietary Restrictions and Environmental Awareness

Gaby Ho, Verrazzano Honors Class of 2020, Completed Major in Psychology, with minors in Chinese, East Asian Studies, and Business
For my capstone, I did a literature review on a research project I had previously completed in Environmental Psychology about dietary restrictions and environmental awareness.

I worked in a group to explore the correlation between dietary restrictions and environmental consciousness based on health, environment, and religion. We were interested in exploring these particular factors because the origins of food have a big impact on the ecosystem.

The food industry impacts water, air and land use. A large portion of fresh water is utilized to sustain animal meat products, which leaves a heavy environmental footprint. Livestock pollute the air with CO2 emissions, greater impacting greenhouse gases, and agricultural land is destroyed by deforestation to provide space to breed animals. The study was based on the relationship between people’s dietary preferences and their knowledge of environmental footprints.

We used a specific scale based on another study that correlated the environmental knowledge statistics with scaled diets. Each diet was labeled with a number that resulted in a score that allowed it to be a quantitative study. Previous research on the topic had very different results to our study’s results. For my capstone research project, I decided to further investigate my previous research to understand this inconsistency.

Presenting at the Undergraduate Research Conference made me feel confident about my research. The basis for my research was possible because of my Environmental Psychology class. I learned to explore a variety of topics by working closely with my professor. She walked me through the entire process from the very beginning to the very end, and was with me at the conference. The process and final accomplishment of my project has given me a lot of pride in my work.