Buying Sustainably

Food

Talk to anyone who was born within or before the first quarter of last century, and you will likely hear about an entirely different approach to food than that to which we are accustomed today.

You’ll hear wistful descriptions of favorite fruit trees and berry bushes, memories of eating peas, beans and tomatoes straight from the vine, and recollections of the hogs and chickens that were kept and eventually slaughtered for the table and for trade. Listen a little longer, and you’ll be told of the various ways the storyteller’s mothers preserved the bounty of food from the garden, and of enjoying that food during the dreary winters, when the gardens were resting up for the following growing season.

If you ask about it, you will also hear how their mothers spent a good portion of their days tending, harvesting and preparing the food that came from the family garden.

Most people’s lives today are simply not structured around the kitchen, and few people have the time or wherewithal to spend more than a few minutes in preparation of each meal. How then, in this modern society, can we manage to eat in a healthful and sustainable way? Here are a few points to consider and some tips on how to take some good first steps in sustainable eating.

Ingredients Sourcing

Before the centralization and commercialization of food production and preparation, people had a pretty good idea about what they were eating and where it came from (usually within the same county that they lived in, if not their own backyards). Now, many of us eat foods that have complex labels that may or may not tell us where the food came from. The one thing that is safe to guess is that the individual ingredients in most packaged food have come from many different places. Consider the beloved American breakfast cereal and snack Cheerios. The consumer generally has no way of knowing where the main ingredient (in this case) oats, comes from, let alone the additional ingredients, including the corn starch, wheat starch and long list of vitamins and minerals. Click here for a complete list of Cheerios ingredients.

Whole Foods

The natural foods grocery “Whole Foods” has a wholesome sounding name, but the name itself implies more than you might think. As an illustration, consider wheat flour. The most commonly used flour in the United States is often referred to as all-purpose flour, or white flour. This refers to wheat flour that has been stripped of its bran and germ (to read more about flour, click here, or about the process of making flour, click here). The bran and germ that have been removed are then considered by-products, and often used in other products for both human and animal consumption. Because the removal of the bran and germ strips the resulting flour of many of its nutrients, the U.S. government mandates “enrichment” of the white flour with vitamins and minerals. Whole wheat, on the other hand, consists of the wheat grain in its entirety. The nutrients are largely intact when it’s ground into flour, and needn’t be enriched before sale.

Simply stated, when you eat whole foods, you are eating the food in its whole form, rather than broken into a variety of parts. To go back to an earlier discussion, let’s look at Cheerios in more detail. According to the side of the box, Cheerios contains the following: whole grain oats (a “whole” food), modified corn starch (a corn product), sugar, oat bran (an oat product), salt, calcium carbonate, oat fiber (another oat product), tripotassium phosphate, corn starch (another corn product), wheat starch (a wheat product), Vitamin E [Mixed Tocopherols (a natural preservative)], and a long list of vitamins and minerals.

Even though its first ingredient is whole grain oats, most of the rest of Cheerios ingredients are parts or by-products from various other grains. Cheerios contains three separate types of oats and two types of corn (neither of which is whole).

Local

What does all this mean? Well, depending on what is important to you, this may mean a great deal. From a health standpoint, the use of all these ingredient “parts” means you are not benefiting from the entire food, as it is meant to be consumed, with the proper blend of its nutrients intact.

From an environmental standpoint, this shift from whole foods means that more ingredients are being transported longer distances in order to make up a single food for us to eat. This means that, for one product you purchase at the grocery store (Cheerios, for instance), each separate ingredient had to be shipped to the factory to be added to the product. So, your cereal was not only shipped from its distribution point to your local grocery, it was shipped, in pieces, to the manufacturing plant.

It is virtually impossible to find truly local foods containing more than a few ingredients. The salsa that came from your neighboring county might be produced locally, but the chances that it is sourced entirely locally are slim.

This is a strong argument for choosing whole foods wherever possible. Going back to the breakfast cereal example, let’s consider an alternative: eggs and oatmeal. With the eggs, sourcing the ingredients is simple, as they are a single, whole food, that is typically relatively easy to find locally. The oatmeal, on the other hand might be more difficult to find locally, but if you buy plain oatmeal (not sweetened or flavored), even if you can’t find locally grown oats, you are assured that only one ingredient had to be shipped and processed to the manufacturing plant before being shipped to your local grocery.

Preparation of “whole foods” doesn’t have to be onerous. With a little practice and planning, you will find quick ways to prepare the basics. Many things can be prepared in advance or in bulk and frozen or otherwise preserved. Then, it’s simply a matter of heating them up for a future meal, when you may more crunched for time. Lunches are a great candidate for pre-prepared meals, and can consist of last night’s leftovers, packed in portable containers and taken to work to heat up in the microwave.

The web has many sites with ideas for quick meal preparation, and one of the better ones can be found at http://whfoods.org. “The World’s Healthiest Foods” highlights a wide variety of tasty whole foods, and offers some helpful preparation tips, as well as sample menu plans to help you get started.

Organic vs. Local

While specific points are often hotly debated, few people would deny the most obvious health and environmental benefits of organic farming practices. By purchasing organic foods, we not only support a healthy alternative to conventional practices, we also increase the ability of organic farmers to continue their sustainable practice. It is important, however, to look beyond the organic/conventional question.

First, consider the question of distance. In some cases, one could argue that the transport of an organic food item from origin to point of purchase offsets the environmental benefit of having grown that food organically (Localvores.org is a new web site that speaks to this issue). An organic apple that comes from Chile might be healthier to eat, but will use significantly more fuel, and might cause a significant impact on the environment compared to a conventional apple that came from across the state.

If this seems significant when looking at one food item, consider how this issue compounds when dealing with processed food. Did the beans, tomatoes and wheat that went into that organic minestrone soup all come from the same community in which they were processed? Chances are the 16 ingredients in the soup came from a variety of communities, on a variety of continents.

This is not to say we should avoid making the effort to eat organic. It is simply a compelling reason to investigate beyond the organic label, and consider whether “local” might be an important criteria in our food purchases.

Now that we have considered a few points regarding the healthfulness and sustainability of the food we eat, let’s consider the packaging that helps it arrive safely in our pantries.

Shopping Bags:

San Francisco hit the news recently by proposing a ban on the use of plastic grocery bags, and other U.S. cities are sure to follow. Active bans are already in place in Taiwan, Bangladesh and South Africa, and a tax is imposed on plastic bags in Ireland (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8888798).

The debate over plastic or paper rages on (a familiar rhetorical question: is it better to chop down trees or strangle sea turtles?), and there are various opinions about the merits of recycling programs, but what is indisputable is that the use of reusable bags cuts down on the consumption of materials. According to the Sierra Club, “a sturdy, reusable bag needs only be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags” http://www.sierraclub.org/bags/. Many grocery stores sell their own reusable shopping bags, and even offer incentives for using them, such as refunds when you use your own bag. It can be tough to get in the habit of remembering your own bags on harried trips to the grocery store, but, just like anything else, the more you do it, the more it will become second nature.

Packaging

While you’re in the packaging conservation mind-set, consider how you can reduce the packaging on the foods that you buy. Arguably the best way to reduce the packaging entering the waste stream is to avoid purchasing items made with excessive packaging. Often, excessive packaging is present as a means to draw your (the consumer’s) attention to the product. If you avoid making decisions based on the advertising efforts of the corporation, you will be sending a (small but significant) message to the company. Often, generic or bulk foods are better choices, due to their thrifty use of packaging.

Much of the packaging purchased with foods can be reduced by planning ahead better, buying in bulk, and purchasing larger portions (and avoiding single serving containers—think yogurt). When you plan ahead, you can purchase quantities that are appropriate for your usage of the items you are purchasing. For instance, if your family goes through 2 boxes of cereal a week, you might be better off (and spend less money) purchasing the less flashy bag of cereal at the bottom of the shelf that will go farther and uses far less packaging. You can even go one step farther and go to the bulk section for your cereal, and many other dry goods. Here, you can reuse bags from past purchases, and buy exactly the appropriate amount for your expected usage.

The produce aisle is another section that lends itself to re-use of grocery bags. There is no reason you can’t reuse that bag that carried your apples home last week for your next produce purchase. Or, better yet, consider avoiding the use of a plastic bag altogether, and just set your larger items (such as apples and potatoes) in your cart. If packed properly in your re-usable shopping bag, they should avoid bruising and get home in good shape.

The goal should be to walk lightly on our earth and, to borrow from years of backcountry backpacking advice; leave it better then when you arrived.

 

     

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