Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

All posts tagged local



Tomato lovers rave about the lively, distinct taste of genuine fresh tomatoes, which they say is infinitely superior to the hard round red billiard balls you can get at the supermarket any time of year. I can’t vouch for this, not being a raw tomato fan, but there isn’t much debate that conventional tomatoes are hard and tasteless. Here’s what author Barry Estabook said in his 2011 book Tomatoland:

“Perhaps our taste buds are trying to send us a message. Today’s industrial tomatoes are as bereft of nutrition as they are of flavor. According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agricul­ture, 100 grams of fresh tomato today has 30 percent less Vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than it did in the 1960s. But the modern tomato does shame its 1960s counterpart in one area: It contains fourteen times as much sodium.”

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’re blessed to be near the Central Valley, one of the world’s great breadbaskets. We also have lots of small farms and urban farmers, so those juicy red tomatoes are not too hard to find here. Farmers’ markets can be found in Berkeley, San Francisco, Walnut Creek, Moraga, San Rafael – go here to find one near you. The newest one opened this week in Lafayette.

You can always GROW tomatoes, as they are very forgiving and brown-thumb-friendly. Even a single potted plant can, with minimal human intervention, provide those tasty red tomatoes that are so prized.




Farmers’ markets have grown explosively in the last decade, now amounting to 7,125 nationwide – and that’s just the ones that the USDA is tracking!

What makes them so valuable?  First, you’re buying (usually) directly from small growers themselves, supporting enterprises separate from the gigantic agribusiness industry. This helps us maintain a sliver of independence from the corporations that are responsible for cheap food that harms the planet with monoculture, pesticides, antibiotics – you know the drill.  Second, you can find certified organic produce – and we know how important that is for health of person and planet!  Third, less packaging and less fuel to transport the goods from farm to your kitchen.

[slideshow]

The social benefits are extra. You can meet the people who grow your food, run into your neighbors and make new friends, hear live music (in some locations), purchase prepared meals, and give kids a chance to learn about fresh, healthy food.

The newest one opens this Sunday morning (9 am – 1 pm) in Lafayette (Contra Costa County) in the BART parking lot. Sustainable Lafayette tells us, “The new “year-round” market will feature roughly 60 vendors, and will offer fresh produce, lots of organic items, specialty foods, baked goods, Blue Bottle Coffee, fresh-cut flowers, a pizza oven, freshly prepared crepes and much more. Live music and hand-crafted art will round out the shopping experience.”




On a trip north to Lassen and Shasta, I discovered a brand-new little restaurant that was amazingly sophisticated for its out-of-the-way location. Dunsmuir is a tiny town (population about 2,000) on state route 5 near Redding, with railroad tracks running down the center. There are boarded up empty storefronts and a little place called Dogwood Diner. It’s only been there a few months and doesn’t even have its own website yet – but it’s growing by word of mouth and garnering raves on the reviewing sites.

What makes it sustainable? Well, the chefs choose as many organic ingredients as possible and offer many creative meatless options, such as arugula salad with red quinoa, toasted almonds, and grape tomatoes with a lemon vinaigrette. You can order sweet potato gnocchi. I had a stuffed acorn squash with mixed grains and curried lentils – delightful! The papardelle noodles come with walnut pesto, broccoli rabe, kale, and parmesan.  So the biodiversity mantra to go beyond the half-dozen obvious foods  (“eat wider on the food chain”) is honored here. Fried portabella mushrooms came with cashew gravy and a puree of white beans and cauliflower – also tasty and memorable.

Our waiter showed us a really unusual touch: since the building was erected long ago on top of a creek, the owners have punched out a square hole in the floor and covered it with thick glass, making a window you can look through to see the flowing water underneath.

Dogwood Diner, 5841 Sacramento Avenue, Dunsmuir CA  (530) 678 3502.




Diversity in our food choices is a good thing. As I wrote in my book,

“The Earth provides an astounding variety of edible life forms. Do you know what a red daikon is? (A delicious mild radish). Have you ever heard of feijoa? (A fruit, also called pineapple guava). Not so long ago, kiwis were unknown in America, and now they are familiar fruits. Many other foods are just waiting to reach your table.  Yet we’re putting all our eggs in a few genetic baskets. Three quarters of the world’s calories consumed by humans come from seven crops (wheat, rice, corn, potato, barley, cassava, and sorghum). The genetic diversity of even these few crops is rapidly disappearing, as their native habitats are being destroyed and fewer varieties of each species are being cultivated.”

[slideshow]

Choosing a wide variety of foods is good for you. The vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients we need are best consumed from food, not pills, since we evolved to eat things in the combinations that nature gives us. Science, on the other hand, operates by eliminating as many variables as possible in order to identify if factor X caused condition Y. That works in many situations (such as tracing the source of a food poisoning outbreak) but not always with regard to diet. That’s one reason we get so much conflicting health advice!

All this is to introduce today’s fun topic, food varieties. Did you know that there are over 4,000 edible varieties of potato? Most of these are found in the Andes Mountain areas of South America. The one pictured here isn’t an unusual variety, just an odd shape. If you’ve ever grown food, you’ll know that not everything is perfect in shape and color. Here’s a link to some really fun and beautiful oddball apple, eggplant, bell pepper, and other familiar fruits and vegetables. The other photos are of beautiful or unusual fruits and vegetables that I discovered while writing about food diversity. So liven up your plate and your palate by finding and buying some new foods.

Where to find them? In Berkeley, where I used to work, there’s the Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market. Please add to the comments and tell us some other places you find wild and exciting foods.




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

 [contact-form] [contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” /] [contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”true” /] [contact-field label=”Website” type=”url” /] [contact-field label=”Comment” type=”textarea” required=”true” /] [/contact-form] 




Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s excellent reporter Carolyn Lochhead published an article on genetically engineered food crops  (GE, also called GMO for genetically modified organism).  She pointed out that GMOs have been linked to human diseases and environmental damage, including catastrophic losses of monarch butterflies. It’s gotten so bad, she writes, that even the food manufacturers are worried that the latest “improvements” to corn planted for biofuel might ruin their own GMO crops!

Did you know that Dow wants to start selling a corn variety bred to be resistant to a pesticide that contains an Agent Orange chemical? In case you’re too young to remember the Viet Nam War, Agent Orange was sprayed widely over that country to kill its rainforests, to make its soldiers easier to target. Besides inflicting unthinkable environmental damage, Agent Orange harmed many Vietnamese and Americans.

The chemical (2,4-D) has been implicated in cancer, Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, reduced sperm counts, endocrine (hormone) disruption, and damage to nerves and the immune system. Its makers hope growers will buy tons of it and spray it on their crops to keep bugs away.  I don’t want it used to produce my food. Do you? Personally, I’d rather eat a bug.

Besides, bugs evolve (whether creationists like it or not) and have become resistant to pesticides, so more and stronger pesticides are applied, creating the well-known “pesticide treadmill” that farmers can’t escape once they’re on it. One expert quoted by Lochhead calls it “a chemical arms race.” Fortunately, lots of people are not fooled – over 140 groups and over 360,000 citizens stated their opposition  to 2,4-D during the public comments period during the approval process.

And in more hopeful news, in California we will soon have a ballot measure that requires food makers to label their products that include genetically modified organisms. So get ready for November and cast your vote FOR freedom of information

A t-shirt I saw at a recent Earth Day event said it all:  GMO?  OMG!