Sustainable Eating

7 Ways to Cook Up a Sustainable Diet

...seven tips for happier (and healthier) eating, wherever you are planted.
1. Savor your food without distractions. Chew it not for "good digestion" but to enjoy the flavors. Don't read or write emails or watch a movie. You may actually notice when you are full and stop. Savoring alone could lead us to eat, spend, and waste less.
2. Cook with what's at hand. If it is in your fridge or on your shelves, count it as local. How much food do we waste simply because we forget we have it?
3. Become competent in your kitchen. Using hand tools rather than a food processor saves energy and sharpens new skills.
4. Adopt one farmer and stock up. Local food means that specific human beings did a lot of hard work with much love to bring good food to their communities. Pick someone who sells at the farmers market or to your local co-op or grocer. Go to their farm and buy food for your No Impact Week experiment. It's fun.
5. Invite someone to dinner. When we eat alone, we tend to wolf down our food. And families are so busy and distracted they often don't think to invite someone over for a meal. I learned that eating is an act of belonging, and we are not meant to be as anti-social as many of us have become. Cook a nice meal from your local supplies and enjoy conviviality.
6. Read the labels at your grocery store. Where do the 25 foods you most often buy originate? Is your olive oil simply distributed in California, or are those California-grown olives? Is your Napa wine really made with Napa grapes, or is it a blend? Is there information about the people who grew the food, packaged, or shipped it?
7. Start some alfalfa seed sprouts on your windowsill on day one. By the last day of the week, eat them.
Local tools, local farmers, local company, local sprouts--it's all part of your local food system.

One change I would make to this list...Instead of "Adopt one farmer" - become a farmer/gardener and grow your own.