Going Flexitarian for Earth Hour

What Earth Hour is, what a flexitarian diet actually involves, and why one hour with the lights off is a useful prompt for a change that lasts longer than sixty minutes.

What Is Earth Hour?

Earth Hour is held on the last Saturday of March each year, at 8:30 p.m. local time. It began in Sydney in 2007 and now runs in more than 190 countries and territories: people, businesses and landmarks switch off non-essential lights for one hour as a visible signal of concern about climate and nature loss.

The organisers have always been clear that the hour itself is symbolic. Its value is as a prompt — a fixed date in the calendar that asks you to pick one thing you'll actually change afterwards. Increasingly, the campaign frames this as "give an hour for Earth": sixty minutes spent doing something for the planet rather than simply not doing something.

If you want a change with genuine leverage behind it, what you eat is a strong candidate. Food systems account for roughly a quarter to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the largest single lever within that is how much meat and dairy is in the diet.

What a Flexitarian Diet Is

Flexitarian eating is mostly plant-based with occasional meat or fish. That's the whole definition. It isn't vegetarianism with an exemption clause — it's a different design, built around the observation that reducing meat consumption delivers most of the environmental benefit of eliminating it, while being far easier for most people to sustain.

The practical shape of it: plants are the default and the centre of the plate; meat is a deliberate choice rather than an automatic one; nothing is forbidden, so there's nothing to fall off. U.S. News & World Report has consistently ranked it near the top of its best-overall-diets list, largely on adherence — a diet with no rule to break is one people stay on.

What it looks like in practice

• Legumes, whole grains, vegetables and fruit form the base of most meals.
• Meat appears a few times a week rather than a few times a day, and often as a component rather than the centrepiece.
• Nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy and fish fill in protein where you want it.
• Cooking skews toward whole ingredients rather than ultra-processed substitutes.

Why It Matters for the Planet

The environmental case is the strongest part of the argument, and it rests on well-documented numbers.

• Emissions. Livestock accounts for a large share of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, with ruminant methane the dominant contributor. Poore and Nemecek's 2018 Science analysis of nearly 40,000 farms found beef produces on the order of 50 times the emissions per gram of protein compared with legumes such as peas.
• Land. Agriculture uses about half the world's habitable land, and roughly three-quarters of that agricultural land is given over to livestock — including grazing and the cropland grown to feed animals — while producing a much smaller fraction of global calories and protein.
• Deforestation. Pasture expansion and feed crops are the leading drivers of tropical deforestation, with the knock-on effects on carbon storage and habitat loss that follow.
• Water. Animal products generally carry a substantially higher freshwater footprint per unit of protein than plant sources.

The scale of the shift matters less than you'd think. Poore and Nemecek's own conclusion was that even partial reductions in meat and dairy across a large population deliver very large aggregate effects — which is the flexitarian argument in a sentence.

Why It Suits People, Too

Diets built around plants tend to be high in dietary fibre, unsaturated fats, potassium, folate and a wide range of phytonutrients, and lower in saturated fat. Those are nutrients associated with supporting normal cardiovascular function as part of an overall dietary pattern — a statement about a pattern of eating, not a claim about any single ingredient, and not a substitute for medical advice.

The other benefit is less often mentioned: variety. Cooking around plants forces you into more ingredients, more techniques and more cuisines than a meat-centred rotation usually does. Flexitarian eating tends to be more interesting, not less.

Where Moringa Fits

Plant-forward eating raises practical questions about protein, iron and calcium, and leafy greens are part of the answer. Moringa is a useful one: per 100 g, the dried leaf carries 27 g protein — including all nine essential amino acids, which is unusual for a plant — plus 2,000 mg calcium, 28 mg iron, 18,900 IU vitamin A and 220 mg vitamin C.

A realistic serving is 2 teaspoons of powder (4 g), contributing about 10% DV iron and 10% DV calcium. It's a top-up, not a protein source in its own right. Stir it into soups, dals, pesto or a smoothie, or drink it as herbal tea.

The tree itself is a reasonable crop from a land-use perspective: fast-growing, drought-tolerant, productive on marginal soil. Ours is grown on family-owned farms in Sri Lanka's rainforest belt under organic methods, hand-picked and solar-dried rather than industrially processed, and bought direct under a model that returns up to 70% of the purchase value to the growers. Our tea bags are plastic-free. You can read more on our sustainability page.

How to Start, This Earth Hour

• Pick a number, not a rule. "Two plant-based dinners a week" is a target you can hit. "Eat less meat" isn't.
• Start with meals that are already nearly there. Dal, chilli, pasta, stir-fries, grain bowls — most of these lose very little when the meat comes out.
• Use legumes as the anchor. Lentils, chickpeas and beans are the cheapest protein in the shop and the lowest-emission by a wide margin.
• Skip the ultra-processed substitutes, mostly. Useful occasionally; not the point of the exercise.
• Buy better meat, less often. Spending the same money on less, higher-welfare meat is a coherent flexitarian strategy.
• Keep leafy greens easy. Frozen spinach, tinned greens, or a jar of moringa powder — whatever survives a busy week.

Switch the lights off for an hour. Then pick one dinner.

Sources

1. Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987–992.
2. Ritchie, H., Rosado, P., & Roser, M. Environmental Impacts of Food Production. Our World in Data.
3. Earth Hour — World Wide Fund for Nature. earthhour.org
4. Leone, A. et al. (2015). Cultivation, Genetic, Ethnopharmacology, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology of Moringa oleifera Leaves: An Overview. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 16(6), 12791–12835.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Always consult a healthcare professional or registered dietitian before making significant changes to your diet, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, or managing a medical condition.