Embracing change for us and the world

My grandfather always said that change keeps us young. For most of us, an appreciation for change is not fully adopted, if ever, until life becomes pedestrian and stagnant, when habits replace milestones and few opportunities for real change are left.

Change is scary. Change forcefully removes us from what is comfortable and pushes us into a territory that is entirely or partially unknown. It is human nature to seek stability and security. Sticking to what we know is easier than tackling that which we do not.

As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once wisely said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Is changing the way we think the root of all change? What would happen if we stopped avoiding change and started embracing and encouraging it?

One of the most difficult areas for us to change is the way we view food. Everyone has their own ideas about what food is and should be, depending on their age and culture, among other factors. For many of us, the foods we are accustomed to greatly overlap with the foods we ate growing up. We eat the foods we know we like; we eat what makes us comfortable. We tend not to actively search for ways to change what we eat.

But what if we should? The United Nations has deemed animal agriculture to be one of the top contributors to climate change, and other studies, including one by environmental specialists at the World Bank, labeled animal agriculture as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. As the population continues to increase and meat, dairy and egg production continues to rise, the planet will not be able to withstand the environmental damage.

The power to save the world is solely in our hands. With every bite of food, we can choose to make a difference. These changes can start right here, at Tufts.

Cornell University recently partnered with an innovative San Francisco food technology company called Hampton Creek that created a healthier and more sustainable version of mayonnaise called Just Mayo. By replacing mayonnaise and cookies with Hampton Creek’s products, Cornell will be able to save millions of quarts of water and millions of grams of carbon emissions. Cornell is not the only school to have made the switch: more than 500 colleges, corporations and museums have too. What are we here at Tufts waiting for?

Recently, our dining halls have been making new, sustainable changes. Last semester, dairy-free cream cheese and egg-free stir-fry noodles were added to the Dewick-MacPhie and Carmichael dining halls after requests from students. This semester, for the first time ever, a plant-based protein, chickpea salad, has been added to the deli stations. To keep sustainable changes like these happening, Tufts needs to see that we want them. Tufts needs to see that we have the ability to change the way that we think and the way that we eat.

Let’s learn to welcome change while we’re still in college, a time when we have all the means to make a tremendous impact on the world. What else will keep us young?