http://www.care2.com/greenliving/eight-steps-to-the-new-green-diet.html
8 Steps to the New Green Diet
Nowhere does the win/win of green living for health and the environment show up more than when one chooses to eat the foods of the new green diet. This diet is the old and timeless one of eating real food grown locally in well-tended soil, with some adaptations for modern life. Here are the steps:
Step 1: Eating Organically Produced Food
Organic agriculture strives toward being sustainable, meaning that which can be continued indefinitely, without depletion of resources beyond a rate that they could be renewed.
Step 2 and 3: Eating Local, Seasonal Food
Eating local, seasonal food supports local farms and saves the energy that would be used to refrigerate and transport food many miles.
Step 4: Eating a Variety of Food
“The loss of genetic diversity—silent, rapid, inexorable—is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction, to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine,” writes Kenny Ausubel in the book Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure. Organic farms grow a wide variety of plants to keep the soil healthy and preserve diversity. Industrial farms, on the other hand, monocrop, meaning they grow nothing but a few commodities.
Step 5: Eating Low on the Food Chain
Humans can eat both high and low on the food chain and be adequately nourished. Residues of persistent chemicals such as DDT, PCBs, dioxin, and many pesticides concentrate in animal fat.
Step 6: Eating Whole Foods with Adequate Fiber
Whole foods are nutritionally complex and complete. Refined foods have had much of their nutritional value and fiber removed.
Step 7: Avoiding Processed Food
The average American eats 150 pounds of additives a year, much of which is sugar and salt. Three thousand additives are intentionally used in processed food. Many of these additives, such as hydrogenated oils, can cause health problems.
Step 8: Reducing Packaging for Public Health and the Environment
Chlorine and dioxin are just two chemical compounds that are released in the manufacture of many packaging materials. Toxic chemicals can also migrate to your food from packaging.
Adapted from The Green Kitchen Handbook, by Annie Berthold-Bond and Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet.
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62 comments
add your comment »Your points are excellent guidelines for sustainable eating. My full meal plan and cooking guide gives folks a way to eat with a low environmental impact right now. Meat production makes a huge footprint, even if you're buying local. Using, say lentils from the middle east doesn't fall withing the 100 mile diet, but the shipping/fossil fuels impact is very low.
I have tasty, cheap, healthy recipes for batches of convenient single servings to freeze. Mostly plant-based but not strictly vegan.
Cheers,
Lynn Shwadchuck
http://www.10in10diet.com/
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thanks...
Kabin
Konteyner
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Humans are herbivores.
No we are omnivores.We show both traits.Look where our eyes are placed.The herbivores eye's are on the side of the head so they can see preditors easier and flee.Our eyes are
are in front so we can chase.What we choose to eat is our choice.
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Thanks for the great tips !!
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The main thing we can do to green our diet is to reduce or stop eating meat!
A recent United Nations report concluded that the meat industry causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transportation systems — that means all of the globe’s cars, trucks, planes and ships combined!
72 acres of rainforest are destroyed every minute, mostly by impoverished people working for multinational corporations, who are cutting and burning the forest to create agricultural or pasturelands to grow beef for export to the United States.
This 38-million-acres-per-year loss will wipe out the entire world’s rainforest in our children’s lifetimes if it continues at its current pace.
"More than 55 billion land animals are killed for food each year - that's 150 million/day."
90% of the animals humans are consuming live in horrible factory farms where they never go outside, live in crowded conditions and have no quality of life. Almost all of them are slaughtered while fully conscious.
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Thanks! Great article! Ive been going through a fantastic green juice detox. Ive been juicing spinach, kale, and wheat grass several times a week with my simple portable juicer. I've never felt better!
Here's to healthy living!
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One of my problems is that I live far north of arctic circle as vegetarian. Hard to live veggie on seasonal food up here. :D There are some things you can grow and store here, potatoes, carrots and such. And we have lots of berries, herbs and mushroom in their seasons. And seaweed :) Lot to learn about how they survived in the old days.
Most fruit and vegs must be brought here. I want to have some sort of indoor 'wintergarden' to grow fresh vegs and herbs also in winter, but haven't even got a house yet, so it's something for the future :)
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In these three instances, compare humans to our fellow land mammals (excluding rodents- I am not a rodent- I can't gnaw through things).
1.The normal or usual number of offspring per birth
2.If you are lost in the desert, and then come across a pool of water,do you either (with or without using your hand) suck the water to drink, or do you lap it?
3.How does your body cool itself when you are hot? Do you pant or sweat?
Humans are herbivores.
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I am a Locavore and "urban farmer," in Miami, who is going back to the basics.
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Common sense article. I have recently made the switch to fully vegan for mostly moral reasons. However, the health benefits that came with it really convinced me that humans are herbivores (or should be) and not carnivorous. Scientifically, our digestive systems are herbivorous not carnivorous anyway. Is it any surprise then that REAL food really heals?
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