Happy Earth Day! - 7 Tips For Green Eating

It’s Earth Day. Which means that you might be experiencing a rush of media extolling the virtues of reusable shopping bags, the evils of single use water bottles, and the importance of organic food. And seasonal food. And local food. And so on. All important issues, but I’m guessing a lot of you know about these things by now. So may I interest you in some other ideas on how to make an impact with your food choices?

Don’t get me wrong. My closet’s packed with cheerleading outfits for the basic tenets of green eating: local, seasonal, organic. They are, in my opinion, vastly important. So I’ll pay tribute to them, quickly, in tip number one–and then cut to the chase with six other tips that see less of the spotlight.

1. Buy Local, Seasonal, Organic.
Shop locally to decrease the fuel consumption of transportation–shop at farmer’s markets, CSAs, food co-ops, and markets that sell local products. Even big box stores are hopping on the local food train. Eat seasonally, which essentially means that you are eating locally, which means that you are not supporting the fuel consumption of cross-country, cross-global transportation. This can be challenging for those of us living in, say, Brooklyn in the winter, but you’d be surprised by all the things you can do with dark greens and winter squash! Support organic agriculture. There, said.



2. Don’t Buy Organic.
What??? Organic should be first choice when it’s locally grown, but consider that shipping a pound of organic apples across the country increases fuel and greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent more than if they had been consumed at their point of harvest. And much of the organic produce on the market is now shipped across the planet. Meanwhile, many local farmers practice organic methods but don’t certify organic because it is expensive and labor-intensive administratively. Since each type of crop needs to be registered, for a smaller farm growing a variety of food it becomes a Herculean task. If you shop at a farmer’s market, talk to your vendors and see if they use eco-friendly agricultural methods–many of the farmers I have talked to do so because they recognize the importance of keeping their land healthy. Consider buying non-organic locally grown produce over non-local organic produce, if you can determine that it was grown conscientiously.

3. Yes, Eat Your Weeds.
Dandelions, purslane, chickweed, stinging nettle, lamb’s quarter, burdock? Yum! Skip the herbicides, and celebrate your weeds instead with a hot pan and some olive oil. Many plants now maligned as bothersome invaders of the perfect lawn were long used as food greens. Just make sure that you identify the plant species correctly. I, for one, go absolutely shivery in the knees for dandelions–you could be, too, by looking at these pages:

Eating Dandelions
Cream of Dandelion Soup
Homemade Dandelion Syrup

4. Minimize Your Meat.
Meat is the most resource-intensive food on the plate. It takes much more energy, water and resources to produce a pound of meat, than a pound of grain or produce. (A pound of beef can require about 12,000 gallons of water to produce, compared to 60 gallons for a pound of potatoes.) In addition, agricultural hormones and antibiotics lead to pollution of soil, air, and water.

If you eat meat, aim for meat from animals who were raised humanely; grass-fed, and without hormones or antibiotics. Try hard to avoid factory farmed meat which relies on large-scale industrialized and intensive agricultural practices that are focused on profit with animals kept indoors and restricted in mobility. Each industry has its own abusive practices, and some are much more cruel than others. For example, the chicken, egg, turkey, and pork industries tend to be far more abusive to animals than the beef industry. A growing number of producers are raising animals without intensive confinement. Refining your diet by choosing cage-free animal products, instead of the conventional factory farm products that fill most supermarket shelves, will help to reduce animal suffering. Happy animals are part of a happy planet.

Try slowly cutting out meat from your diet. Become the term that Mark Bittman of The New York Times has coined–a Lessmeatatarian! He is vegan daily until 6:00 PM.

And, trust me, this is torture for me - a die-hard meat-lover. The bloodier it is, the better. But there are benefits.

5. Eat Antiques.
Grow and shop for heirloom vegetables–varieties that have been around for a long time–to help promote biodiversity. Heirloom varieties can be knobby, speckled, bursting with flavor and loaded with character–they’re not industrially-raised supermarket produce designed for life in a truck and a shelf. With big agriculture growing only a small variety of the same bio-engineered (often patented and sterile) seeds, we run the risk of letting thousands and thousands of generations-old fruits and vegetables become extinct. The same goes for grains and beans. Heirloom beans are awesome; their flavor and texture do justice to their poetic names such as Black Valentine or Butterscotch Calypso.

Learn about heirloom beans and how to cook them here.

6. Mind Your Chills and Hot Flashes
Your refrigerator can be one of the biggest energy drains in your home. Here’s the cooling-efficiency cheat sheet cribbed from Sustainable Dave’s (much more comprehensive) post, Putting the Deep Freeze On Your Energy Loss: Do the dollar bill trick on the seal to check air-tightness; keep the fridge and freezer full; keep the fridge at 35 to 38F degrees, and the freezer around 0F; clean the coils; keep it in a cool place.

Meanwhile, keep the heat out of the kitchen by cooking outside–outdoor grills use less energy than your stove and keep heat out of the house, reducing energy needed to feed hungry air conditioners. And being outside is nice.

7. Love Your Coffee Farmer.
Lord knows I try to be good about my eating habits, but then, there’s coffee. I can manage to eat straight from my farmer’s market all winter long, but I can’t seem to shake the coffee. And until someone figures out a way to grow coffee beans in New York’s climate (which isn’t going to happen any time soon–fingers crossed), it’s a decidedly not-local item.

Especially with coffee, the consumer’s spending power can really make a difference. Coffee is the world’s second most valuable traded commodity, behind only petroleum. Second, isn’t that interesting? Imagine the impact of our shopping? According to Global Exchange, there are approximately 25 million farmers and coffee workers in over 50 countries involved in producing coffee around the world. Coffee producers are kept in a cycle of poverty and debt by the current global economy designed to exploit cheap labor and keep consumer prices low. Buying Fair Trade Certified coffee ensures a proper wage and working conditions for those who harvest and handle it, and 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. Look for the Fair Trade Certified label on your beans or in your coffee shop.

Limiting Your Java Waste Starts at Home (by Sustainable Dave)

I was planning on jumping straight to ways to avoid coffee cup waste on the road, but I realized that the problem can be avoided much earlier: Don’t even hit the coffee shops to begin with.

While this may seem like an overly simplified way to go about things (many of my ideas are), let’s think about it. Say the average cup of coffee at your local Coffee Peets & Starbucks conglomerate costs $2. If you get a cup of coffee every morning, five days a week, over a 50-week period (I’m assuming you have a nice boss and get two weeks paid vacation … and dental), that’s $500 over the course of a year.

While $500 seems like enough of an incentive, it doesn’t stop there. You’ve also got to factor in the wasted time standing in line in the store (3 minutes per cup would add up to 12.5 hours during a year), the waste you are creating (250 cups, covers, and warmer sleeves), and, while it can’t be quantified, the extra money you are paying in taxes for all that waste to be disposed of (where do you think landfill and recycling money comes from?). So it’s costing you a lot more than you even recognize, it’s just that because it’s spread out over time, it doesn’t seem that bad.

As an alternative that will save you money, save on waste, and save on time, I’d like to suggest trying to make your cup of joe at home.

Let’s start with coffee makers. There are a ton of electric models on the market and if you have one, then by all means, dust it off and see if it still works. Having said that, if you don’t own one, consider buying one used on (www.craigslist.org) craigslist or a similar site. Some may balk at buying a used coffee maker, but run a concentrate of vinegar and water through it a few times, clean it up, and it’ll be good as new. We had a used Mr. Coffee (or was it a Ms. Coffee, I can’t recall) that we used for years that cost us $10 at a tag sale. One note, however: Unplug them when not in use. Doing so will not only be safer (ever leave it on when you head out of the house for the day?) but will save on energy (that little clock timer is sucking power every second it’s plugged in).

Now, staying with the auto drip coffeemaker theme for a second, let’s talk about filters. There are really two ways to go; “disposable” and reusable. The paper “disposable” filters come in white (bleached) and brown (unbleached) and there is some debate over whether or not the bleached ones are a problem as they may leach chemicals into your java. I don’t really need to see any big studies to recognize that a chance of drinking bleach doesn’t sit as well with me as opting not to in the first place, so I’d go with the brown ones if “disposable” is your choice.

While the paper filters do a slightly better job at catching all of the grounds, a metal reusable is a much better way to go in my opinion. The paper filters will run you about $2 for a 100-pack while the reusable (which you can toss in the dishwasher if you’d like) will run you just under $10. The metal filters will save you money and cut down on waste. We’ve been using them for years and have never had a complaint.

Back to coffee makers, if electric auto is your thing, than have at it. Personally, I prefer one of two less energy intensive methods. The first is a French drip coffee maker. We actually have one from camping a few years ago and use it all the time. You put in grounds, pour in hot water let it sit, and plunge. No mess, no fuss, and a really good cup of coffee. The other method is similar to an auto called a Melitta. It’s basically a carafe that has a little filter holder on top. Pour the water in and it will filter through the grounds, emptying down into the carafe. Voila, coffee sans coffee maker.

As for the coffee itself, here’s my suggestion. Many stores now sell coffee in bulk using their own generic bags. Fill one of these up, pay for it, bring it home (you can grind at the store or at home) and then empty the coffee into an airtight container (a Tupperware will work fine). Then fold up the bag, stick it in your reusable shopping bag and you’ll have it there next time to bring back to the store. You’ll never have to toss one of those plastic/metallic coffee bean bags in the trash again.

A pound of coffee will make somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cups of coffee (by my estimation) and will sell for about $10 or less. For 250 cups of coffee, you’re looking at $50 compared to $500 on the go, and you’re cutting down on your waste stream by a major factor. And while we’re on coffee, I’d suggest checking out fair trade beans as opposed to non-fair trade. The prices are now comparable and you’ll feel better for having supported a sustainable living wage for the farmers.

And finally, wondering what to do with those coffee grounds when you are done with making your morning cup, check out these tips for more than enough ideas.

While making your cup at home may seem like a lot of work it really isn’t. If you have an auto drip maker, you can set it up the night before, plug it in before your shower and voila, coffee when you are done. If you are using one of the other methods I mentioned, you can look for your eyeglasses while the water is boiling, and then it’s just pouring it over the grinds, add milk and sugar, and drink.

Like anything else, making your own coffee at home takes a bit of experimenting and a bit of training, but you’ll soon realize it’s not that hard. There are a few costs that I can’t quantify, like the electricity/gas it takes to boil the water, but overall, you’ll more than save the price of a maker and metal filter in the first year alone. If anyone has any other energy/waste saving tips on the coffee making front, please feel free to share.

Next up: Coffee on the road and how to avoid those darn cups.

Dave Chameides is an environmental educator and freelance filmmaker. He writes alternative fuel articles for Edmunds.com and maintains the blogs 365 Days of Trash and Achieving Sustainability. While he is presently saving all of his trash for a year to better understand his environmental impact, his main focus is sustainability through education and believes that with knowledge all things are possible.

Which Drinks Hydrate and Which Don’t? + Summer Drink Recipes!

filed under: Health & Wellness, Diet & Nutrition, Healthy Beauty Basics, alcoholic beverages, fruit juices, hydrators, purins, soft drinks

Adapted from The Water Prescription, by Christopher Vasey, N.D. (Inner Traditions, 2002).

Have you ever wondered if a cup of coffee or tea and milk can substitute as one of your recommended eight glasses of water a day? Most drinks do a good job of hydrating, but the components of some common drinks sharply reduce their hydrating ability. Which drinks are the best hydrators, and which the worst? Here are the three most hydrating and the four least hydrating drinks.

Drinks That Are Strong Hydrators

*Water
Water is the preeminent beverage for correctly hydrating the body.

* Herbal Teas (Infusions)
The leaves from plants such as mint, verbena, linden, balm, and so on give a pleasant aroma and flavor to the water in which they are steeped, which makes infusions a satisfying alternative to people who don’t enjoy drinking plain water.

The medicinal properties of the plants do not have a negative effect on the body’s assimilation of the water.

Note: The benefit does not extend to sweetened infusions, or if the tea is made with plants that have diuretic properties, such as dandelion.

* Fruit and Vegetable Juices
The water in fruits and vegetables–their juice–is one of the liquids nature has provided for hydrating our bodies. Juice is water bound to a substance. To maintain our harmonic balance with nature and avoid taking in too high a concentration of nutrients and sugars, we should consider juice a secondary resource to be used in moderation.

Drinks that Are Weak Hydrators

* Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa
Drinks that have a base of coffee, black tea, or cocoa are quite high in purins, toxins that must be eliminated from the body by urine or sweat in the form of uric acid. Purines need to be diluted in large quantities of liquid to be evacuated without irritation. A good portion of the water consumed with these drinks is used to eliminate the toxins.

* Milk
Milk is a food, not a drink, and its digestion by adults is frequently incomplete.

Whey, on the other hand, is very easily digested, but its diuretic properties are an impediment to its consumption as a daily beverage.

* Soft Drinks
Soft drinks often have a high caffeine base, a diuretic, which makes a body lose water before it has time to make its way into the intracellular environment. The other problem comes from the high sugar content of most sodas. The body has a hard time properly metabolizing refined sugar. To correct the reaction to this, the body has to surrender water from the extracellular fluid. Because that makes a person thirsty, a vicious circle is created, as the thirst is being maintained by the very beverage that is drink with the intention of getting rid of it.

* Alcoholic Beverages
Alcohol itself has dehydrating properties, removing water from the tissues it contacts and drying them out and increasing the need for water.

5 Favorite Cool Summer Drinks

Compiled by the editors of Eat Well Naturally.

Here are five frosty drinks filled with fresh fruit and other healthful ingredients to keep you refreshed, hydrated, and nourished in the coolest way possible! Avoid packaged drink mixed filled with sugar and artificial ingredients and turn to Mother Nature’s storehouse for these tasty treats to beat the heat.

Find out how to make Honeydew Lime Cooler, Peachy Iced Green Tea, Watermelon Mint Smoothie, and more. It’s all here:

Honeydew Lime Cooler

This one can also help us lose unwanted weight: Peachy Iced Green Tea

Watermelon Mint Smoothie

This one is a tonic for your third-eye chakra: Mystic Mango Smoothie

Berry Banana Smoothie