Food

When looking to make personal changes in your lifestyle, what better a place to start than the food you eat? What’s not as obvious however, is how what we eat affects the world we live in. For instance, the average North American consumes food that has typically traveled at least 2400 km’s. This is a major problem because this process uses tremendous amounts of fossil fuels to transport the food and to keep it refrigerated during the trip. There are a number of changes you can personally make to be proactive in dealing with this problem.

Eating Locally

A great way to reduce the environmental costs associated with food transportation is by shopping at local farmers markets and eating locally grown seasonal produce. Approximately twenty-three percent of the energy used in our food production system is allocated to processing and packaging food. You can avoid a lot of this by buying from farmer’s markets or from the farmers themselves. For more details on eating locally, try the 100 Mile Diet at www.100milediet.org.
Another alternative is having your own garden, which besides being more environmentally friendly can be enjoyable and rewarding as well.
Remember: Eat locally, think globally!

Organic Foods

Organic farms use natural growing practices that produce sustainable agriculture and healthy alternatives to the conventional crops that are grown with pesticides and genetically modified organisms. The biggest culprit of fossil fuel usage in industrial farming is not transporting food or even fueling machinery; it’s the chemicals used by the farming industry. As much as 40% of the energy used in the food production system goes towards the production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
For more on this check out- https://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/pesticides/

Meat with Growth Hormones

Many farmers in the cattle industry use growth hormones in order to improve the rate of growth of their product. The major ecological problem with this practice is that the growth hormones end up being excreted by the cows and are causing developmental problems among fish and other wildlife.
Another major issue with the use of growth hormone is that it affects the meat that we consume and can disrupt human hormone balance. This disruption can lead to developmental problems, due to the hormones interfering with the reproductive system. There is also new evidence that it may even lead to the development of breast, prostate or colon cancer. Luckily, at this point in time, government regulators in Canada don’t allow the use of growth hormone in chickens, lambs, or pigs so these products seem to be safer. To give you an idea of how serious the problem with growth hormones in beef products is, the European Union has banned growth hormone use in farming and has banned the import of any hormone treated beef products into Europe.
You can visit www.eatwellguide.org for online listing of stores, restaurants and producers that sell hormone-free meat and dairy products.

Eating Less Meat

One aspect of food that has a major detrimental affect on the environment and our ozone layer is the large consumption of meat products by North Americans. Half of all water usage, 87% of all agricultural land and a third of the fossil fuels used in the United States is devoted to producing meat product.
Pound for pound, far more resources go to producing meat than non-feed grains, fruits and vegetables. Large quantities of energy are required to cultivate, harvest, and ship animal feed, not to mention house, transport and slaughter animals. Energy is also used to process, package, and refrigerate the meat until it’s cooked.
U.S. farm animals produce 1.4 billion tons of solid manure per year; a whopping 130 times the amount produced by the human population. Methane produced from livestock worldwide accounts for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gases!
Health Canada says over 90% of our exposure to the carcinogenic pollutant dioxin comes from our food, especially animal fats such as meat, fish, dairy, and eggs.
Reducing your meat consumption, especially beef products, reduces food related land use, greenhouse gases and water pollution problems.
For the reasons stated above, becoming a vegetarian is one of the most effective ways you can make your lifestyle more sustainable.
We are not suggesting that you absolutely need to become a vegetarian. Instead we hope you make an effort to try to reduce the amount of meat in your diet. If you can’t hold back from eating meat, make sure to eat locally, and purchase products from here in Alberta.

Grocery Shopping

Use cloth grocery bags. Plastic bags are made from nonrenewable petroleum resources and during production require the use of toxic chemicals. Plastic production produces 14% of toxic emissions in the United States and a lot of the plastic products that Canadians use come from production plants in the United States.
Go with products that use the least amount of packaging.
Buy in bulk. This way you avoid the excess packaging that comes from buying smaller quantities.
Reduce your use of single-serving and single-use products. Think of the needless amount of extra paper and plastic that goes into all that packaging! Buy large juice jugs and put the juice in your water bottle rather than buying huge bundles of juice boxes.
Nearly half of the eggs found in supermarkets are labeled organic, but be wary because it is not guaranteed organic unless it is labeled as Certified Organic. Certified Organic (Canada Organic) – is government regulated and tested to ensure that all the products are authentically organic. For more info check out: www.cog.ca
Purchase Free Range chickens when shopping; Free Range means that the chickens can go outside and move around freely. Keep in mind this term is not government regulated in the same way that Certified Organic is.
Free Run chicken means that the chickens are cage free but probably still live in a barn.

Farmed Fish Products

The feed given to farmed salmon is ground up fish meal, which means farmers use 3 kg of wild fish to produce 1 kg of farmed salmon. Besides being wasteful, using ground up fishmeal is also problematic because it concentrates any of the toxins that were present in the wild fish into the farmed salmon. Since farmed salmon is usually grey and not the pinkish hue of wild salmon, artificial coloring is added to the feed to make the salmon appear healthier.
Check out www.seachoice.org for more sustainable seafood information.

Cooking

Cook in bulk when you can. This way you can store the extra food you made in reusable containers that can be used for lunches or those days when you are just too tired to make dinner. Bringing leftovers to work or school is also great because it means you can avoid fast food and its excessive packaging.
Always cover pots when cooking. It uses less energy and speeds up cooking time.
Chop your own vegetables rather than buying them precut. Far more energy goes into producing a bag of precut vegetables in a food processing plant (energy that is completely unnecessary) than cutting them yourself.

Water Use

Make sure the kitchen faucet is in the “cold” position when turning it on for brief periods. Significant amounts of energy are used when turning on the hot water even before the hot water starts to flow.
Instead of running the kitchen faucet until the water runs cold, store a pitcher or bottle containing water in the refrigerator so it’s ready to drink when you are.
Try turning on the faucet a fraction of its full range for things like washing hands and rinsing dishes. You’ll save considerable amounts of water.

Other Considerations

Let hot foods cool before putting them in the refrigerator to prevent raising the internal temperature of the fridge, which will require more energy to bring back down.
Reuse glass jars for food storage or even use them as glasses to drink from. Plastic food tubs such as those used for yogurt can also be reused in a number of different ways.
Remember what your kindergarten teacher taught you: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
When ordering fast food, try to take steps to reduce the waste it will produce. For example, if you’re taking it home, don’t take what you won’t need (i.e. napkins, excessive ketchup packets etc.). You can always ask the employee to write, “No napkins, flatware or condiments” directly on the ticket order.
Consider bringing your own reusable plastic food containers or plastic bags to carry the food when eating take out.