Clean, Healthy Eating; Better Choices for Your Family

We've all heard we need to shop the edges of the grocery stores for the healthiest foods, but there is more to eating healthy and being green than which part of the store you shop in.  Today I want to share some information on choosing the best foods with the lightest ecological footprint for you and Mother Earth.

When preparing a meal we need to start with what food we want to build that meal around.  For the vast majority that will be meat.  Meat has the largest ecological footprint of all foods we can eat, instead consider cutting back and making meat a side dish if you aren't ready to cut out meat all together.

Fish isn't a good alternative either. We are quickly depleting the species of fish in the oceans.  Many of the fish we are purchasing comes from China. These fish are raised in the most polluted waters in the world which means your fish is highly contaminated.  The FDA only inspects 1% of the fish entering the US and rejects 65% of that 1%. Unfortunately, the FDA has no power to have the fish returned to the country of origin so it travels from one sea port to another until it finally makes it past inspections and into your grocery stores. Another issue are the findings of banned drugs found in imported fish, formaldehyde and even the practice of feeding fish tainted fish feed make fish a scary choice for your meal.

I like to build my meals around vegetables, with winter fast approaching my garden has been put to bed and I am eating from my freezer. I planted greens in the window along with carrots and radishes to have fresh salads I know I can trust to be pesticide free.

I was torn for many years on which vegetables from the store had a smaller ecological footprint.  Frozen foods need refrigerated cars, but then so do many of the fresh produce you buy.  It came down to which were healthier for my family.  Did you know the fresh produce is picked early and sprayed to slow it's ripening process then trucked across the country.  Each day your food waits to reach your table it loses more nutrients.  Unlike fresh produce, frozen is processed within minutes of picking, in a flash freezing that stores all the nutrients.You can read more about that here from someone who worked in the frozen food industry.

Grains are another subject that doesn't get much attention.  Rice uses the most water to grow, and carries the heaviest footprint.  But rice also has a hidden health hazard not many people are talking about. Arsenic.  While the US government assures us the levels are safe, many others are sounding the alarm starting with Consumer Reports who are suggesting infants and children under the age of 5 should not be exposed to it.  This includes infant rice cereal, and in any rice product such as cold cereals, and both white and brown rice.  ABC News has an informative report and video you can see here to learn more.

What can we do?  First there are other healthy options such as barley and quinoa. For breakfast oatmeal is by far the better choice.

So what can you do to prepare greener meals?

• Eat less meat, and know where your meat comes from
• Reduce the amount of fish you eat and again, know where your fish comes from
• Shop locally at farmer's markets
• Investigate which grains are the healthiest for you
• Choose frozen in the grocery stores before the produce section
• Don't buy prewashed and packaged vegetables in the store as these are more costly and have been sprayed to keep them fresh longer
• Start a garden to grow the foods you eat most or are on the list of the dirty dozen which are the foods with the highest pesticide levels.

 Don't get overwhelmed with fear, be informed and enjoy eating again.

Expanding the Ecological Footprint

 Waste Not Want Not

When we start to think about the resources that are used to make the things we use every day we know we are depleting the ecological balance of the earth.  What we take out of the earth we return in the form of garbage.  What we don't often think about is that we aren't just polluting the planet, we are also polluting the atmosphere as well.  Here is a look at what our planet looks like from space.

 

Shocking to see

Have you ever stopped to think how much trash we have left in space? We hear about our ecological footprint but very little is mentioned in the mainstream media about what our space program has left behind.  Recently, the news programs brought this to our awareness when In November a failed Russian Mars probe began falling back to the earth.

Closer to home

There obviously isn't much we can do as individuals about the "space Junk" that is already there.  Even if we were to become politically active there wouldn't be much we could do about future missions into space. What we can do is take care of the planet we inhabit.
I'm sure you have an idea how much trash we produce every week. If you haven't thought about it just look outside on garbage pick-up day. How full are the trash cans sitting at the curb? Now multiply that by every household in the country. Where do you think this will all end up? Yes, there are a few states left that are still relatively uninhabited, but not many.  Are we entitled to continue to produce the amount of waste we currently do, resorting to shipping our trash to another state to deal with?
Now,  think what might be in those garbage cans.  How many chemicals, batteries,  paint cans, and so on could be in our nation's garbage? We can do our part to slow down the growing wastes in the landfills by shopping smarter.

It's not just our garbage

To survive on this planet we need a few things, access to clean drinking water and healthy foods just being two of them.  If we continue to flush old medications down our sewers, and spray our lawns with chemicals we are only harming ourselves.  Everything we put on our lawns ends up in our water supply.  Everything we flush down our sewers is potentially not going to be filtered out before entering back into the water supply.  And what is in our water supply inevitably ends up being sprayed on the foods we eat and feed our families.

Doing our part

There are a few things we can do at home that will help, if not the space junk, at least the landfill junk.

• When shopping, look at the packaging. How much of this will end up in the landfill because we can't think of another use for it
• When buying cleaning products, look for non-toxic cleaners.  If you shop at your local whole foods store or co-op you can buy many in containers you can refill, eliminating waste all together.
• Live simpler, re-use first. If you really do need something try first to find it used. When you buy gently used items, whether that be furniture, cars, or clothes you save them from ending up in the landfills/junkyards and you eliminate the use of natural resources to create a new product.
• Stop spraying chemicals on your lawns.  Instead of maintaining the lawn on your entire property, try leaving part of the land wild,  adding a garden, or plant native plants which will be attractive and reduce your time spend maintaining that perfect lawn.
• Look for non-toxic ways to treat pests and weeds. Here is a  simple one I learned this past summer: to kill off unwanted weeds or stop a trail of ants from entering your house, use boiling water.  You can pour the boiling water directly on the weed, or along the trail trail the ants follow. The weeds die and the ants become confused and lose their way into your home.

Create less waste at home

We only have one planet to live on. Let's be smart, take care of what we have.  We will save money, time, and maybe find a healthier environment for all of us to live in. I used to say one person can't make much of a difference so why bother. Today I realize how wrong I was.
One person can make a difference by setting an example.  Think of it this way, if people are quick to try and have bigger and better just to have what they see others have, could they look at you and see another way that might suit them better? Change will only come when someone chooses to try.
The best way to make changes is to share what you are doing with others. I found a way to eliminate using wrapping paper during the holidays. I used left over fabric given to me for free to create my own re-useable gift bags. As a result I have been asked to make bags for family members so they can use them too. What have you done to eliminate waste from your household?