A guide to eating greener:

Organic Foods and More: 30 Days to a Greener, Healthy Diet

http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating-plans


Recipes, advice and ideas for a healthy eating plan that's earth-friendly.
The "greenest" foods are healthy foods. Whether you eat meat or are strictly vegetarian or vegan, these are the foods that are good for you and good for the planet. In 4 weeks you can make the switch to a diet of delicious, whole, organic foods, local foods, artisan foods with fewer pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, genetically modified ingredients or chemical additives.


1  Pour a Glass of Organic Wine 
2  Think Food Quality, Not Food Quantity 
3  Eat Like Grandmother 
4  The Scariest Foods You Must Buy Organic 
5  Try a Glamorous New Old Grain 
6  Read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food 
     

7  Project Pantry Purge 
8  Drink Milk Like a European 
9  Eat a 100% Local Meal Each Week 
10  Be a Compassionate Carnivore 
11  Shop a Farmers' Market, CSA or Food Co-op 
12  Switch to Butter (Don't Faint) 
     

13  Buy an Heirloom (or a Heritage) Food 
14  Clean Out the Old Spice(s) 
15  Go Vegetarian 2X a Week 
16  Buy a Great Olive Oil (and One for Everyday Use) 
17  Learn a New Food Word: Artisanal 
18  Simplify with The Art of Simple Food 
     

19  Ban High-Fructose Corn Syrup 
20  Treat Yourself to an Artisanal Cheese 
21  Eat Bread (It's OK Again) 
22  Go Brown 
23  Get Real with Sweeteners 
24  Be Kind to Chickens 
     

25  Rent Fast Food Nation 
26  Try a Tofu Recipe (You Can Do It) 
27  Eat Slow Food Not Fast Food 
28  Pick Your Own 
29  Ditch the Drive-Thru 
30  Listen to the New Dirt Farmer CD

A guide to eating greener on the cheap. A bit long winded unfortunately, but you get the picture:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/03/10/moneytales.DTL&type=news&source=cmailer

Eating well on little money is an art, I realized as Jane regaled me with stories about how she feeds herself and her son as well as any Whole Foods patron on a limited budget.

The first is to not be afraid to shop at places like the Grocery Outlet — a.k.a. the Gross Out. "We get canned fish there," Jane said. "Wild salmon, canned in Alaska. We make salmon burgers with that." This and cans of sardines and kippered herring are sold at the Grocery Outlet for about $1 a can. Because Jane's ancestry is Scandinavian, she thrives on a high fish diet. "My grandfather and dad were both fishermen in Minnesota," she said. The irony is not lost on her — she has become a canned-fisherwoman.

So, the meat, the organic meat — how was that cost-effective? Isn't organic meat the most expensive thing out there?

"I buy the tougher cuts from the organic animal," Jane said. She bought chuck roast and brisket — meat that most wealthier eaters avoid. "Rich people want the steaks, but there's plenty of meat left over. These cuts need to be cooked longer, but they're delicious."

As for the chickens, the birds she bought were stewing hens — inexpensive birds culled from an organic egg operation. Jane said she can eat from one chicken for an entire week. She'll roast it, then make a stir fry, then make a stock from the carcass, then make chicken noodle soup. She was also delighted that the hens still had their feet — an important ingredient for making chicken soup stock. "I'll even chomp on the bones after that," she said, displaying her strong white teeth. "But I don't want to chomp on something I'm not sure about," she said, pointing out that's why she bought the birds in Marin.

Instead of buying locally grown organic vegetables, Jane has become her own local, organic producer. A nonprofit urban farm group called City Slicker Farms, which builds gardens for low-income Oakland residents, installed a series of raised beds in her backyard. So now Jane grows the majority of her greens in these beds.

Instead of seeming like a chore, growing her own food has become a hobby and a source of joy. Her tiny plot gives her a connection to the land. Farming, even on this small a scale is a reminder of her cultural heritage. Her grandfather lived through the depression, and always had a large urban garden in St. Paul, Minn. "He would garden and listen to baseball games," Jane said, smiling at his thrifty ways. "He collected rainwater in barrels." It makes sense for Jane to return to spendthrift methods in the face of a recession.

When I serve the pumpkin pie, Jane admits to her most unorthodox method of healthy food procurement: the Dumpster. Several local organic bakeries have enormous bins filled with day-old bread. "I think it's kind of exciting — right there are heaps of gorgeous bread saying, 'Take me home,'" she said. When she was growing up, with seven brothers and sisters, Jane got used to dealing with scarcity. "I remember one time I couldn't go on a field trip because it cost $2," Jane said. "We didn't have any extra money — not even $2." It makes her proud to harvest from a place where food is going to waste. The bread often goes in her son's lunch when he goes to pre-school — sourdough bread spread with sunflower seed butter.

Jane also saves money on food by never buying processed foods. "I would never buy salad dressing, right?" Jane said, explaining that she just makes her own. Recently, her son was offered applesauce: "He didn't know what it was," Jane laughed. "What 2-year old hasn't had applesauce? But I figure he can chew apples, why have them mashed up?"

None of these things feels like a sacrifice to Jane. "How else would I eat? This is just who I am, what else could I do but eat well, no matter what?" By being thrifty, growing her own and salvaging from Dumpsters, Jane has returned to her roots. She has turned the potential shame of poverty into a point of pride.

Sorry to let you (and the environment) down musician.
I just eat whatever crossed my plate and fill up with whatever pump I am in front of .

On the upside, I try to buy aussie veges. Does that help ?

Sprintcyclist wrote on Mar 19^th, 2008 at 10:20am:


I guess most people do, and living in the bush, I don't have much choice either sometimes as far as fuel is concerned.

While individuals can make some difference, it's really up to governments and larger companies to make a real difference in a lot of cases. This latest initiative of Anna Bligh's to source green energy for the Gold Coast desalination plant is an example of what has to happen if we're going to get out of this mess..

Coming clean on organic logos

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/coming-clean-on-organic-logos/2008/03/22/1205602728858.html

LABELLING on organic products in Australia is confusing, potentially misleading and urgently needs reform, consumer advocacy group Choice says.

It is calling for a single, unified system of certification to replace the current method, whereby several different bodies regulate producers, and some brands make completely unsubstantiated claims to be organic.

Research by The Sun-Herald reveals how buying "organic" can cost customers more than twice as much. The organics industry is one of the fastest growing in the Australian food and grocery sector, increasing by 30 per cent in the past year.

It is now worth about $400 million a year in the retail sector, the Government's Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation says.

There are eight organic certification bodies, which are overseen by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.

But some own-brand organic products bought by The Sun-Herald in Coles and Woolworths last week had none of the official logos. Woolworths' organic tinned tomatoes had no official certification, and the small print on Coles organic carrots stated "product in conversion to national standard" with no other explanation.

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The case for organic builds

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/27/95332/6053?source=food

For years, industrial-food enthusiasts such as Norman Borlaug have attacked organic farming on two grounds: 1) it produces essentially the same nutritional results as chemical-intensive farming, and 2) it's less productive.

Both of those criticisms are crumbling. This month, the Organic Center released a "state of science" analysis of peer-reviewed studies comparing the nutritional content of organically and conventionally grown veggies. Organic wins by a substantial margin.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have published a study (abstract here; press release here) that compared organic and chemical-intensive cropping systems for growing grain and forage (animal feed) crops.

The Organic Center study makes fascinating reading. The authors show that before 2000, very few peer-reviewed studies compared organic and conventional food; the ones that did looked only at "macronutrients" -- vitamins and minerals. In that era, there was little consistent evidence pointing to an organic advantage.

Things have changed since. We're learning that macronutrients only tell part of the story. Evidence is building that micronutrients -- antioxidants, phytonutrients, etc. -- play a serious role in human nutrition.

Moreover, peer-reviewed studies on the topic have boomed since then. And organic is showing a clear advantage in macronutrients (except vitamin A) and a huge advantage in micronutrients.

Here are some bits I learned from reading through the report.

Overall, the nutritional value of conventional veggies has been falling for decades. As farmers (and their input suppliers and extension agents) have worked to maximize yield, food has become significantly less nutritionally dense. In a survey of veggie crops, for example, riboflavin levels dropped nearly 40 percent between 1950 and 1999. (For more info on this, see an earlier Organic Center report called "Still No Free Lunch: Nutrient Levels in the U.S. Food Supply Eroded in Pursuit of Higher Yields.")

Dousing vegetables with water and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (i.e., conventional ag) triggers biological reactions that actually tend to increase vitamin A production. Score one for Borlaug and the industrial-ag apologists. But it also increases the presence of nitrates -- "which is not desirable for overall plant or human health." And it decreases vitamin C levels as well micronutrient levels. So conventional veggies are often richer than organic in vitamin A and nitrates -- and much lower in nearly everything else beneficial.
The protein content of conventional U.S-grown corn and soybeans has plunged in recent years -- likely due to yield-boosting mania and the near-universal use of genetically modified seeds for those crops.
Overall, this is an extremely interesting study for anyone who wants to understand the effects of chemical-intensive agriculture on nutrition.

As for the study comparing conventional and organic in the field, the press release states the results thusly:

Can organic cropping systems be as productive as conventional systems? The answer is an unqualified "Yes" for alfalfa or wheat and a qualified "Yes, most of the time" for corn and soybeans according to research reported by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and agricultural consulting firm AGSTAT in the March-April 2008 issue of Agronomy Journal.

In a post last November, I pointed to other peer-reviewed research drawing similar conclusions.

Apparently you can make good money buy buying bulk corn, pumpkins etc from woolies or wherever, throwing a heap of dirt onto it, and selling it at a market as organic.