Live Earth's advice
on
Using Your Food Choices to Fight Global
Warming
--------------------------
http://liveearth.msn.com/green/htgmeals1
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.
Top Ten Tips
Here are 10 highly
effective ways to go greener. Hit it.
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
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
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
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.
So You Wanna Do
More?
Not content with just
getting by? Go hardcore.
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.
By The Numbers
Want the real deal? Here's
where the rubber meets the road.
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.
See more at
http://liveearth.msn.com/green