How to Green Your Meals
by Team Treehugger, Worldwide on 10.30.06
What’s the Big Deal?
The dailies? You know - milk, bread, eggs - the dailies. These are the things that you find yourself running out each week (or each day) to purchase. Now, you spend a lot of money on these purchases because of their purchasing frequency, so its important that something worth so much money is chosen carefully.Guide Navigation
1. The Big O
When you eat organic, don’t just picture the healthy food you are putting in your body, picture the healthy ecosystems which produced that food, the workers who are safer from chemicals, the land, water, and air that is being protected, and the wildlife that is being allowed to thrive. Organic vegetables, fruits, grains, juice, dairy, eggs, and meat (and don’t forget the organic wine and beer), are grown and processed in ways that support healthy people and a healthy planet. (While you may not be able to find or afford organic options for everything you need, certain fruits and vegetables are more pesticidy than others.) For details on the meaning of organic, see the USDA Organics homepage.
2. Fair fare
Fair trade certified food ensures a proper wage and working conditions for those who harvest and handle it. But fair trade is green for the environment as well. TransFair, the only fair trade certifier in the US, has strong environmental standards built into its certification process that protect watersheds and virgin forests, help prevent erosion, promote natural soil fertility and water conservation, and prohibit GMOs and many synthetic chemicals. TransFair claims that their environmental standards are the most stringent in the industry, second only to USDA organic certification.
3. Go local
3. Buying seasonal, local food is a boon for the environment for a lot of reasons. Since most food travels many miles to reach your table (1,500 miles, on average), locally sourced food cuts back on the climate-change impacts of transportation. Local food also generally uses less packaging, is fresher and tastier, and comes in more varieties. It also supports small local growers and lets them get more for their produce by not having to spend so much on packing, processing, refrigeration, marketing, and shipping. The best way to track down local food is at farmers markets or through community supported agriculture (CSA), which often offer home delivery.
4. Don’t follow the pack
Instead of buying foods that come in extensive packaging (most of which is petroleum-based plastics) look for unpackaged or minimally packaged foods, experiment with bringing your own containers and buying in bulk, or pick brands that use bio-based plastic packing. And of course try and recycle or reuse any packaging you end up with. [Trader Joe, we love you but it’s a packaging nightmare in there]
5. Compost the leftovers
Greening your meals isn’t just about the food that winds up on the plate—it’s the entire process, the whole lifecycle shebang. Composting leftovers will ease the burden on the landfill, give you great soil, and keep your kitchen waste basket from smelling. Apartment dwellers and yardless wonders can do it too! And yes, a composting toilet can be part of the miraculous cycle as well. (see below for more resources)
6. Grow your own
In the garden, in the greenhouse, in the window box, or something fancier. Even urbanites can get quite a bit of good eats from not much space.
7. To and from
7. Just as buying locally grown food cuts on “miles per calorie,” buying from local sellers cuts back on emissions, fuel consumption, and unnecessary traffic.
8. Just enough
8. Put some extra planning into the amount of food you cook will cut back on waste. If it’s something that will spoil quickly, try to avoid making more than you or your family can eat. If you’ve got extra, make a friend happy with a home cooked surprise. If it’s a bigger affair, give the leftovers to those who may need it more.
9. Raw
Many people swear by the benefits of eating raw. Whatever the health advantages may be, preparing raw food consumes less energy and because raw food is usually fresh by definition, it is more likely to be locally grown.
10. Ease up on the meat
Meat is the most resource-intensive food on the table and eating less of it can be the single most green move a person makes. Producing meat requires huge amounts of water, grain, land, and other inputs including hormones and antibiotics, and leads to pollution of soil, air, and water. A pound of beef requires around 12,000 gallons of water to produce, compared to 60 gallons for a pound of potatoes. If you’re a meat eater, for starters, try cutting out a serving of meat each week. Going vegetarian or vegan is a profoundly meaningful environmental choice, and it’s done wonders for Chris Martin and Prince.Back To Top Λ
1. Co-op-eration
Organize a local food coop or farmers market in your area. This will provide people in the area a convenient and readily available source of local food, plus help support area farmers.
2. Think like a squirrel
Purchase extra fruits during the summer and practice drying and canning them. Then they will be available year-round, even when they’re not in season.
3. Cooking with the sun
Solar ovens really work, even with dim sun. They can cook a huge variety of foods and don’t require any fuel other than our friendly local stellar nuclear reactor. What’s more, the basic design is so simple, most do-it-yourselfers can make one for very low cast. (Some ovens we’ve covered in the past are here, here, here, and here.)
4. The 100-Mile Diet
For many, eating local is a novel concept. The 100-mile diet is an idea that challenges people to source food from within a hundred mile radius of where they live. The idea has even caught on among restaurateurs and comes in website form, too. Also see the TreeHugger 100-Mile Thanksgiving Challenge
1. Shipping a pound of apples from a farm in Iowa to a market in Washington requires 30% more fuel and releases 30% more greenhouse gases than shipping those apples to a local market in Iowa. 2. The average US meal comes from five different nations. 3. Food today travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to market. That’s 25% farther than it traveled two decades ago. 4. It is estimated that a making a liter of orange juice requires 958 liters of water for irrigation, and 2 liters of fuel for tractors, water-pumping, pesticide spraying, and the occasional electric heater to ward off frost. 5. A study found that to gather all of the ingredients needed to make strawberry yogurt in Germany, 8,000 km worth of travel were required to bring everything into one place. 1.More on composting A pile of kitchen leftovers in a simple bin will do a pretty decent job of breaking down, but for those looking for more advanced means of decomposition, there are options that can work faster, yield richer soil, and even work indoors. Bokashi is an indoor method developed in Japan for apartment dwellers. A healthy community of worms in your compost will break down organic matter fast and can be kept in an enclosed bin. Electronically controlled compost systems are hitting the market that promise a faster, sweeter smelling breakdown and can sit in the kitchen like an appliance. 2. Growing your own Hydroponics, aeroponics, and just plain nifty devises are making it easier to grow more in less space. Some are downright stylin’. (see below for more) 3. What is The Omnivore’s Dilemma? The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a book written by Michael Pollan, which looks at the current state of food production through the industrial chain, organic, and the hunter/gatherer chains. Pollan brings up tough decisions, like whether organic produce flown in from halfway around the world is better than the local produce with pesticides. Industrial food also brings in a list of questions over all of the ingredients that go into modern food, and the chemicals, fertilizers and other ingredients that go into the production of food. Treehugger.com has been a leader in promoting the green lifestyle and has numerous resources on how others have done just that. For more information, you can begin by checking out the food section on Treehugger.com. 1. For growing your own fresh vegetables and herbs in a limited amount of space, see some systems and methods we’ve covered in the past: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 2. One wild tip on how to keep those veggies fresher longer is to use an Ethylene Gas Guardian, which removes gas buildup from your fridge which would otherwise cause your veggies to spoil faster. 3. Ahh, that eternal burning question: paper or plastic? TreeHugger tackles the issue and suggests an alternative. 4. Pollan. Mackey. Two names getting a lot of attention in lately for their views on produce and where it’s grown. Read more on the debate. 5. Earthtalk discusses more on the fine art of eating local on TreeHugger. 6. TreeHugger TV zooms in on How to Find Green Fish and Milk. 7. A solid look at how to choose your fish wisely. 8. A trove of delectable dishes can be found throughout TreeHugger’s Recipe of the Week. The following links are resources developed to promote sustainability and help you get started greening your food staples. A cornucopia of food resources can be found on Care2’s Green Kitchen section. Want local food but don’t know how to get it? The GreenLeaf Market is for you. This resource is a network of local farmers and where to find them. Trying to eat locally grown food can be a challenge, especially from the get go. More resources can be found at the Eat Local Challenge. The ever-astounding Worldwatch Institute has several studies on the impacts of locally grown, organic, and factory-farmed food. The Sustainable Table offers helpful tips on buying local and sustainable, and for promoting sustainable food in schools. Eat the Seasons is a UK-based website showing which foods are in season each week, the health benefits of those foods, and how long they are in season, among other helpful facts. A North American based site will be launched soon.
Generally good tips, though "local" doesn't always mean "low emission". In some parts of the world, farming is so energy-inefficient that it's possible to grow produce on the other side of the world and ship it with less total emissions than growing it locally.
Here is good footnoted article for explaining why eating less meat is so important for the environment.
Meat production's environmental toll
"The world is experiencing a population explosion of farm animals. The combined weight of the world's 15 billion farm animals now surpasses the weight of the human population by over one and a half times. These animals have a huge appetite for feed crops and grazing land. The solution: a vegetarian diet requires only a half acre of land – seven times less land than a meat-based diet."
Bravo, TH, this is a fantastic resource I can direct my friends to. Well done.
Why isn't "Go Vegan" (or even vegetarian) first on this list? Going vegan is the largest single environmental action a person can take. As mentioned in Tip #10 and in Steve's comment, the production of meat and animal products extracts a horrific toll on the environment.
Going vegan is easy, it is free, it is true environmentalism, and that doesn't even begin to consider the positive health benefits!
You assert that even apartment-dwellers and yardless people can compost. Well, that's true - but you don't tell us what to do with that compost! Where are we supposed to put it once it's sat on our kitchen counter for a week or two?
Go vegan? no thanks. So you can't be a true environmentalist if you're not a vegan?
In some parts of the world, farming is so energy-inefficient that it's possible to grow produce on the other side of the world and ship it with less total emissions than growing it locally.
Malarky.
Malarky? What do you base that on?
What if the "local" meat, for example, is fed on imported grain, uses lots of fertiliser, and is raised partly indoors in an energy-intensive manner? All of that plays a part in the total emissions for the whole life-cycle of the product, but is ignored by the emphasis on food "miles". Transport is not the only use of energy or source of emissions to be considered, and in many cases all of the other factors can far exceed the contribution of "food miles".