Eating like I mean it

My food choices actually are very environmentally focused. One of the reasons I choose to be a vegetarian is environmental, since the meat industry is such a big contributor to carbon emissions. This year, I’ve started trying to buy as much food as I can from local sources to cut down on shipping and production emissions, as well as buying things with as little packaging and chemicals involved as possible. For example, I bought a big tub of oatmeal that I flavor myself rather than a box of individually wrapped oatmeal packets with un-pronounceable ingredients. The same goes for my yogurt, and next on my list to simplify is my bread. I try to get my produce from farmers’ markets, or if I do buy it at a grocery store, to buy things that were not shipped long distances. This means that I have cut out fruits like bananas and pineapple entirely. I’m still working on the heartbreak that will come with no more lettuce during the winter, but I hope to someday get there.

I do have other reasons for eating this way; meat makes me feel squeamish, I think farmers’ market produce tastes better, and I like to know what exactly goes in to what I’m eating. I have been heavily influenced by Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in how I choose to eat, as well as Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy. Both of these books support a locally-oriented economy, for many reasons other than environmental ones. However, the main reason that I eat the way I do is environmentalism.

Of the things I have eaten in the past two days, the item with the biggest environmental impact was probably the pizza I ordered. Not only did it have a lot of ingredients, which means more items that were shipped from long distances, I had no way of knowing what exactly was in it. Add to that the fact that it came in a box that I threw away and that the delivery person took a trip in a car to get the pizza to me, and the pizza has a pretty huge carbon footprint.

When I think about the impacts of my food, I think about how many ingredients were involved, where they came from (if I know), the process for making them, and how far I traveled to get it (in the case of my pizza, it traveled to me). Other factors in this decision could be what type of growing methods was used (for example, synthetic fertilizers impact the health of aquatic ecosystems).

I choose to value simplicity and distance higher than organic vs. conventional farming methods, but I recognize that food grown in a natural way is more sustainable in the long run, as well. That being said, I refuse to shop at places like Whole Foods that claim to be environmentally friendly to make people feel better, while still importing their produce from across the globe and selling food in tiny plastic packages.