ENVIRONMENTALLY AWARE SHOPPING - FOOD

Queries

• Do I take food for granted?
  What are my major considerations in choosing and buying my food?
  
  
• Do I know what my personal nutritional requirements are?
  Can I meet them simply without exploiting others or the environment?
  Am I afraid of what changing my diet would be like?
  
  
• How do my eating habits relate to the increasing hunger and starvation in the world,
  to the exploitation of farm workers,
  to the food policies of the government,
  and to proposed international programs of food distribution?
  
  
• Could I use the arable land around my house to grow fruits and vegetables,
  perhaps sharing the work and harvest, or just offering the land?
  Is there a community garden in my neighborhood, or could there be?
  (Some cities furnish land and water, even fertilizer or compost, to gardeners.)
  
  
• Could I get along without those foods grown as cash crops (e.g., coffee, tea, bananas)?
  
  
• I consuming more protein than my body needs?
  Am I making an effort to use protein foods other than meat?
  Do I feed pets high-protein foods that could be used to feed people?
  Are pets (especially big eaters) a luxury I should reconsider?
  
  
• Where do I buy my food?
  Am I supporting the large supermarkets and agribusiness with my economic power?
  Is there a small independent grocer,
  a local farmer, a co-op market, or a food co-op that I could be supporting instead?
  
  
• Can I get along without packaged, canned, or convenience foods -those 'gross national products' of industry?
  Why do I buy these foods?
  To what extent are my eating habits influenced by the media?
  
  
• Are there conferences, workshops, or speakers in my community that could inform me and others more
  about protein consumption, nutrition, food coops,
  community gardens, and the world’s food needs?
  Is there a need for some of this educational work in my community?
  Could I move to fill that need?
  Could I join my efforts to those of neighboring communities in an educational project to reach a greater number of people?
  
  
• How should food production and distribution be rightly managed to provide adequately for all the world’s people?
  Who should make policy decisions and how should decisions be enforced?
  What changes should be made now to move toward long- range goals?

Projects

• List everything you eat in one day and analyze it as to its nutritional value, additives, and social, political, and ecological considerations.
  At the end of the day, add them up and see if your nutritional requirements were met.
  Would you want to make any changes?
  Let’s Get Well, by Adele Davis, has good food-composition tables which include whole grains, seeds. sprouts, etc.
  The USDA Food Com position Handbook is also good.
  You can also find the daily minimum nutritional requirements for your height and weight in these books.
  For information on additives and other considerations, refer to Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe, The Poisons in your Food, by William Longgood, and Eater’s Digest by Michael Jacobson.
  
  
• Make an inventory of your cupboards and refrigerator with nutritional, ecological, and social considerations in mind.
  
  
• Go on your own supermarket awareness tour.
  Take some friends.
  Note advertising, packaging, placement of items to get attention, sales, ingredients, etc.
  Note what people are buying.
  Look for excessive use of plastic and paper bags.
  Do you see any smaller or irregular fruits and vegetables which are less expensive offered on sale?
  What happens to the produce that develops a bruise or bad spot, or the cheese with a mould spot?
  
  
• Try meatless meals for a few days or a week.
  You may be in for a pleasant surprise.
  Refer to Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe, or Recipes for a Small Planet by Ellen Buchwald, for recipes emphasizing protein complementarity.
  If decreasing meat consumption is difficult for you, try eating meat progressively fewer times a week or using only very small amounts for flavor.
  The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas has delicious recipes.
  Have vegetarian potlucks focusing on protein complementarity.
  Go out to dinner at restaurants featuring vegetarian specialties.
  
  
• Write letters or even brief postcards to congresspersons urging support of the food policies listed earlier.
  
  
• Join or start a neighborhood food co-op.
  Write for a national directory of co-ops and information on starting them.
  
  
• Start a cooking co-op with several families, where each family cooks once or twice for others and delivers the meals or invites the others over.
  
  
• Find out what your local schools serve for lunches.
  What is served at school parties?
  At P.T.A. meetings?
  What changes could be made to reflect nu- tritional, ecological, and social concerns?
  Choices such as herb teas with honey, dried fruit, and nut snacks could be offered in addition, with a note explaining why.
  
  
• Try to get your local market to stock grains in bulk and provide information on how to use them to combine proteins properly.
  If they sell books, do they have Diet for a Small Planet and Recipes for a Small Planet available?
  Does your library have these books?
  Would they do a display on protein complementarity?
  Such a display could be used at special events or group meetings, too.
  
  
• Does your local market sell grass-fed beef?
  How many signatures on a petition would be required to persuade them to offer it as an option?
  What about your local school cafeteria, church dinners, restaurants?
  
  
• Deliberately fix less than'enough' for a meal and experience what it is like to remain hungry.
  Try this as a surprise at a group dinner and discuss people’s responses.
  
  
• A group might sponsor a 'sacrificial meal' with only rice and tea.
  You might do this as a benefit for UNICEF or another hunger-related project.
  The meal might be eaten in meditative silence with relevant informational material or poetry read at intervals and perhaps a film or speaker afterwards.

Some Questions About lifestyle.......Clothes.......Buying Instead of Being

Green/Ethical Economics

Return to list .......Return to Radical Recycling

Rough Guide to Site.......Site Map

This page is part of the Re-earthing the Cities Website

Contact Margaret RainbowWeb
URL - http://www.users.on.net/~arachne/food.html