Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

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Kitchen gadgets you don’t need

In Excerpt from Book, Recommended Reads, Uncategorized, Useful tools,
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  • Posted on May 10, 2012
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credit exfordy on flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was writing The Green Foodprint, I checked out some of the quaint devices you can buy to make cooking “easier.” I located the following:

  •  Microwaveable ice cream scoop
  • Cherry pitting device
  • Home cotton candy maker
  • Oddly shaped pan that bakes brownies with more edges
  • Gadget that cuts up a hot dog to look like an octopus.
  • Microwave s’more maker
  • Avocado knife

While one might applaud the ingenuity, I shook my head over the waste of metal, plastic, packaging, trucking, and electricity that go into manufacturing, distributing, and using these ridiculous toys. But wait! There’s more! You can also get a stainless steel lobster fork, a toaster with a Darth Vader design, a voice-recognition electronic grocery list organizer (for a mere $150), and an espresso machine that (I kid you not) recognizes your fingerprint so it will make your drink just the way you like it, without all that exhausting pushing of buttons on regular espresso machines. This toy will set you back $3,200.

Seems I’m not the only one scratching her head at this technology gone wild. A New York Times reporter also found people who confessed to having purchased an automatic polenta maker, escargot tongs, milk frothing machines, and a panini press. It appears that Rube Goldberg is alive and well in the design department of manufacturers desperate to part you from your money.

Here’s the main advice I give in The Green Foodprint: Use your muscles to chop, stir, peel, and all the rest. You’ll be healthier for it – and so will the earth.


The Green Foodprint: Finalist in Next Generation Indie Book Awards!

In Excerpt from Book, In the News, Recommended Company, Recommended Reads, Take Action, Useful tools,
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  • Posted on May 9, 2012
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The Green Foodprint: Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet was named a Finalist in the Science/Nature/Environment category for the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest Not–for-profit book awards program for indie authors and independent publishers whose purpose is to “recognize and honor the most exceptional independently published books”.

Wondering what The Green Foodprint is all about?

Click below to read the first chapter of The Green Foodprint, and learn how you can help save the earth with your food choices.

 Book Sample: The Green Foodprint

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Reducing food waste

In Excerpt from Book, Food, In the News, Recommended Reads, Take Action, Uncategorized, Useful tools,
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  • Posted on May 5, 2012
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You’ve heard that in nature, there’s no such thing as waste. Yet in America, the amount of food that we waste every year is staggering. A study found that we waste millions of tons of food a year — 29% of all we produce – at many points, from farm, to packer, to store, to table.

Given that there are so many hungry people in this country, that’s a tragic loss. But the study pointed out another consequence that I hadn’t thought of before: the entire life cycle of growing, packaging, transporting, and disposing of all this waste produces 2% of our greenhouse gas emissions, over a hundred million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Meanwhile, a staffer for the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the average American family of four loses up to $175 a month in wasted food, and included some interesting charts she gleaned from the report mentioned in the first paragraph.

We can stop this waste and eat healthily and creatively. An article with the provocative title “That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner”  gave several ideas for using those thick broccoli stalks: peel and chop them to make soup, or shred them to put into broccoli slaw, or shave them and top with lemon zest and Parmesan cheese.

What you can do:

  • If you buy a new or special ingredient on impulse (and that’s not a bad thing, since diversity in diet is good for us and for the earth), be sure to use it right away.
  • Enjoy leftovers. This is your chance to learn new recipes, or put on your creative hat and invent something original. My own theory is that some of our favorite dishes evolved from the combination of leftovers and necessity.
  • Compost the scraps that aren’t salvageable (heavy cauliflower leaves and stalks, for instance, and the odd bits you scrape off your plate after dining). Once you see the beautiful black rich soil that food scraps turn into in the compost bin, you’ll be amazed you ever thought of food scraps as garbage.

Or you could check out The Green Foodprint, which I published last year (2011).


Your water footprint

In In the News, Recommended Company, Take Action, Uncategorized, Useful tools,
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  • Posted on May 1, 2012
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Water is the third ingredient in our Top Three Absolute Requirements for Life, after air and ahead of food.  Lately I’ve been reading about a concept called “virtual water,” or your “water footprint.” This is the sum of all the water that goes into supporting your life. We naturally think of the water we drink, flush, and bathe in. But did you realize that we use water to grow our food, grow the cotton for our clothes, and generate energy? The list goes on.

The Nature Conservancy,   using information from the Water Footprint Network, has prepared an amazing infographic. The average American’s water footprint is… almost 33,000 glasses a day, or over 750,000 gallons a year. Most of this is NOT in what we drink.  The biggest user of water is livestock that we eat as meat. Cotton is next – check out the infographic here. 

National Geographic gives even more details. One pound of beef requires 1,800 gallons of water. Soybeans require only 216. Refined sugar requires 198. Check out their “embedded water” site here. 

Since water for drinking and sustaining other non-human life obviously trumps waste, we are all involved in this issue.

What you can do:

  • Use less water to do dishes, laundry, and bathing. This means full dishwasher, shorter laundry cycles, and shorter showers.
  • Use less energy of all kinds. We get some hydroenergy from damming rivers.
  • Fix leaky faucets.
  • Eat less meat, or none.
  • Compost food scraps instead of using water and electricity to send them down the disposal.
  • Find more information in The Green Foodprint.

There’s only a certain amount of fresh water on earth at any point in the water circulation cycle. Let’s use it wisely.


How to avoid GMO food—and why

In Food Politics, Food to Avoid, GMO's, Useful tools,
  • Posted on December 27, 2011
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Let’s start with why you might want to avoid food that contains genetically modified ingredients. Basically, it’s simple, sensible caution. We don’t yet know how GMO foods will affect the health of person and planet – but we do know that agri-corporations that push GMO foods are desperate to avoid having them labeled. They are banned in Europe.

Now let’s look at how to avoid GMO. The easiest way is to choose organic foods as often as you can find and afford them. A new guide to avoiding GMO (the Center for Food Safety’s True Food Shopper’s Guide, available as a pdf or for mobile devices) has three more easy-to-remember tips: 1. Look at labels and buy foods that come right out and say “Non-GMO.”  2. Avoid ingredients that come from the most heavily modified crops (corn, soybeans, and canola). 3. Use the True Food Shopper’s Guide to identify the companies that do not use GMO.

Finally, there’s something you can do about this. In California, an initiative to require GMO food to be labeled has been submitted, and early next year you’ll be hearing more about it. The Organic Consumers’ Association has more on this. When the time comes, you can sign the petition to get the initiative on November’s ballot, and tell your friends.


Thinking about going vegetarian?

In Food to Try, Recommended Company, Uncategorized, Useful tools,
  • Posted on December 4, 2011
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It’s a good lifestyle – healthy for you, for animals, and for the planet. There’s a huge array of delicious food choices and recipes available to you, and there’s lots of support for making the transition (books, groups, websites, and more).

The weekend before Thanksgiving, the Tri-Valley Vegetarian Society held a sumptuous potluck at the San Ramon library. (Tri-Valley refers to the area of the East Bay that includes San Ramon, Danville, Pleasanton, Dublin, and Livermore). We had not only a tasty meal, but also two informative presentations. Chris Durrant of Pleasant Hill has invented a children’s board game, Fur and Feathers, that playfully shows kids how to be kind to animals. Josephine Bellaccomo, an executive coach and animal lover, gave us a lively demonstration of how to communicate effectively. Lisa Books-Williams, a certified Green Chef instructor, demonstrated a yummy relish recipe and coordinated the whole event. I made new friends and had a great time.

If you live in the Tri-Valley area and would like to know more about the TVVS, contact Lisa Williams at lisa@thriveholistic.com. If you’re in or close to San Francisco, contact Dixie Mahy at the San Francisco Vegetarian Society at dixie@sfvs.org. You don’t have to be a perfect vegetarian or vegan to attend – as TVVS says, “Non-vegetarian family members and the “veg-curious” are also welcome to participate!”


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