Food & Health

While there's not always a white Christmas in Scandinavia, there's always a white season - that time of year from November through the following sprouting of spring when the local food selection is based on lots of roots - namely turnips, potatoes, parsnips, and horseradish - and fish like the slightly slimy salted cod called lutefisk. Winters can be a bit lean with only local ingredients, starting in late spring and moving through the gorgeous summers there's a bounty of lovely foods that Scandinavians eagerly await and tend to go crazy on. Take a look at the northern bounty.

Food & Health

Pomegranates are a fall and winter treat. Photo by JOE M500 via Flickr.

It's easy to see what seasonal eating looks like while grocery shopping in Turkey. Sure, the large chain supermarkets out in the suburbs have all sorts of exotic imports, but at the neighborhood manav (greengrocer), you know summer is on the way when strawberries start to appear, tumbling from sidewalk stands in what seems like endless bounty -- and then they're all but gone until the next year. (Though organic growers near the city are still small and few, the local magazine Time Out Istanbul has some good tips for eating organic in Istanbul.) Following in Collin's Oregon-centric footsteps, here's what 12 months of eating local, seasonal food looks like in Istanbul.

Food & Health

What do you do when you want to grow your own food, but live more than a mile above sea level in Colorado? That's the question my dad wanted to answer when he started this project about a year ago: Living at 7,750 feet above sea level, with a summer growing season of about 80 days between killing freezes, how can you grow your own food? His answer: A geodesic dome solar greenhouse.

Click through to see what it's like to build one for yourself, and how the garden grows inside once you're done.

Food & Health

Photo credit: Savannah Grandfather @ Flickr

Sure, organic farming leads to healthier food, but there are a host of benefits that going organic can provide to you and the planet. And the benefits aren't limited to just the actual food -- there are huge implications for water and soil conservation, and even mitigating climate change. Click through to learn more about the benefits of organic farming.

Travel & Nature

Photo credit: BotheredByBees @ Flickr

Bees might be the most interesting insects in the whole world. They're great architects, accidental chefs of some of the sweetest stuff on Earth, and, oh yeah, have a hand in almost the entire world's food supply.

But bees are in trouble, too. Colony collapse disorder is something we've seen evidence of for a number of years now, with no clear cause, and no definite end, in sight (though it is looking a little better).

Food & Health

Photo credit: Getty Images / Ryan McVay

We talk a lot about eating local, seasonal food, but that can be tricky to visualize in different places around the world, depending on the season, region, even the micro-climate. To help showcase eating what's coming out of the ground, all year-round, we'll run a series of slideshows -- sort of like a calendar for green eating -- to see what a year of green eating looks like. First up: Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Food & Health

Photo via stock.xchng by bouwm019

Should we be eating more beef in order to slow global warming? It sounds counterintuitive, but it may be so: Cattle could be part of the whole ecological equation to solving climate change and restoring healthy, bio-diverse ecosystems. I am a vegetarian, but I maintain there is a place for grass-fed beef on family menus—and pasture-raised cattle in global warming solutions. Cows can help more than harm if they are sustainably raised.

Food & Health

Photo credit: keeping it real @ Flickr

This time of year, gardening can be a great way to get some dirt under your fingernails and grow some of your own fruits and veggies, but we all don't have the room to sew row after row of vegetables. Happily, there are myriad options out there for the container gardening enthusiast; here are a few for those of us who have a green thumb, but no extra room.

Take Action

Photo via stock.xchng by ortonesque

Let’s clear up one issue: There is no such thing as local vs. organic. When it comes to consumer choice, we should be buying local and organic, though for mostly different reasons.

Food & Health

The sun in shining, the birds are singing, and delicious local food is growing, and, while everyone's backyard (or local farmers' market) produces different treats at different times, here's a quick list of treats you can expect to see on a table near you. Now that summer is officially here, be on the lookout for these tasty fruits and vegetables at your local farmers' market, in your CSA subscription, or at your local grocery store.

Food & Health

Photo credit: adactio @ Flickr

TreeHugger founder Graham Hill helped originate this concept and write this post. Thanks boss!

The Challenge to Going Vegetarian

To most people, meat tastes great. To ask them to go cold turkey (har, har) is a huge ask. The vegetarian movement has focused on pushing a binary decision. A "Either you're with us, or you're against us" approach. A result of this is that meat-eaters either immediately reject the concept or promise themselves that they'll go vegetarian later. And that "later" rarely comes.

Food & Health

TreeHugger has been highlighting various aspects of the worldwide water crisis for the past few weeks, so it seems appropriate to look at the water footprint of common food items. Keeping in mind that the water footprint of you food is only a part of the environmental impact of your diet—land use, fertilizer use and whether those are chemical or organic, how far and by what method your food is shipped, social considerations regarding land use are all also components—here's how much water your food consumes:

Food & Health

Photo credit: Getty Images / Robin MacDougall

TreeHuggers know that eating organic is better for people and the planet, but do you know which veggies are most important to buy organic? As a follow-up to our previous run-down of the 12 Fruits with the Most Pesticides, we present the 12 veggies most likely to be laden with pesticides.

Thanks to the Environmental Working Group's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides for crunching the numbers on pesticide laden-veggies.

Food & Health

"Eat organic," you hear, over and over again. But it can be tough to find organic versions of your favorite fruits and vegetables all the time, so, how do you know which are most important to eat organic?

Thanks to the Environmental Working Group, whom we recently named as Best Natural-Health News Website, who've created the Shopper's Guide to Pesticides, we know which fruits are found to have the most pesticides; click through to see which 12 fruits have the heaviest pesticide loads, so you'll know which fruits you should definitely buy organic.

Food & Health

Image courtesy of Bloggyboulga via Flickr

With overfishing and increased mercury levels, it seems like no fish is safe fish these days. For these reasons, I barely indulge myself in my favorite of all ocean-borne culinary delights: the sushi bar. I usually feel OK about this since the greenest option of all is to skip the fish and its hefty carbon footprint.

But—for those rare occasions when I do find myself caving into a sushi craving (I admit, I’m guilty) or under the sway of a friend who wants to meet over sake, there are some lesser-known eco-options in addition to my go-to veggie rolls. They’re all listed under The Seafood WATCH’s sushi guide's “Best Choices” column--meaning that the fish are a bit more abundant than their threatened counterparts and caught or farmed in eco-friendlier ways. Check them out here!

Food & Health

The local food movement, eating local, being on the "100 mile diet" or being a locavore are all synonymous with local food, whose consumption has risen to prominence as an important part of the larger green movement. Taking the baton from organic food as a poster child for sustainable agriculture, local food integrates production, processing, distribution and consumption on a small scale, creating sustainable local economies and a strong connection between farm and table.

The benefits of eating local food
Local food has myriad environmental benefits -- we've mentioned just a few in connection with having a green Earth Day -- as well as the social, economical and agricultural benefits of supporting small family farms. But there are many facets to the simple-sounding lifestyle choice.

Food & Health

Though known colloquially as food that is grown to be more healthy (and is more expensive), in order for organic food to be certified as such, it must be produced under specific, legally-regulated standards and be subject to testing in order to retain certification.

Organic food: the definition
In agriculture, this means that crops were grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers or sewage sludge, and that they were processed without food additives (like chemical preservatives). When it comes to animals, they must be reared without the routine use of antibiotics and growth hormones and fed a diet of organic foods. In most countries, organic produce must not be genetically modified.