Showing posts with label sustainable agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainable agriculture. Show all posts

June 18 - Sustainable Gastronomy Day

Posted on June 18, 2020



Buy from small, local suppliers.

Buy from small farmers who use sustainable farming techniques.


Cook fresh rather than buying processed food.

Buy foods in season. 



Up-cycle food.

Use recyclable packaging.

Eat leftovers! Don't produce large amounts of food waste.



These are some of the basics of eating sustainably. 

If you plan meals ahead, you can avoid food waste AND save money.

Remember, you don't have to change everything about how and what you eat right away, and you don't have to be perfect. Slowly chip away at these goals, eating better and better and better. 

Nobody's perfect! Forgive yourself if you need occasional junk food. No biggie if you do take-out once in a while - although it might make sense to look for a take-out restaurant that buys and cooks sustainably. (Check out Too Good To Go.) You may have good health or other reasons that require you to order some specialized food items from far away. 


Do what you can, and if EVERYBODY tries to do what they can, too, what a difference it would make!

Also, consider donating to a sustainable-farming organization. Check out this article.


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February 10 - World Pulses Day

Posted on February 10, 2020


When I hear the word pulse, I think of a blood pulse - the rhythm you can feel in your wrist as your heart beats out blood and the blood beats that rhythm all through your body.

On second thought, I also think of music pulsing - music with a good, strong beat, that is!


But! - I didn't know that the word pulse also means the edible seeds of various plants: chickpeas, lentils, beans, peas, etc.

It is that completely separate meaning of the word pulse that we are celebrating today in this United Nations event. Pulses are important foods, globally, especially nowadays. 

Beef farming is so inefficient, it
represents a 96% loss of food production!
Raising and eating meat is a problem for several reasons: religious reasons, health reasons, and especially environmental reasons. It takes less a lot less energy, land, and water to produce plant-based foods than to grow livestock we use as meat. And some livestock (ahem, cows, looking at you!) add global-warming-causing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

If a country didn't add any acres of land dedicated to agriculture, not even one acre, but only grew plants, they could grow 2 to 20 TIMES more food. (Read more about this here.)

Since there are A LOT of people in the world, including a lot of hungry people who regularly don't get enough to eat, it's important to get as much food from ever acre of agricultural land as possible. And pulses are especially wonderful foods among all the other great plant-based foods, because they are high protein and high fiber, with lots of vitamins and minerals (including iron!). Pulses are also low fat. 

(People on low carb diets often limit how many beans, lentils, etc., they eat, because these nutritious foods do have carbs, but again, much of the carbohydrates are dietary fiber, which is a necessary part of a healthy diet.)

Check out this website as you plan your World Pulses Day celebration. Eat pulse-based meals and photograph them for social media, using #LovePulses and #WorldPulsesDay hashtags.
Black bean salad
Chickpea curry
Potato lentil soup

Maybe next year you can plan a community event promoting pulses and eating low on the food chain!?!







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October 16 – World Food Day

Posted on October 16, 2013

The date for a day to focus on food was chosen to honor the first day of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization. And this year's food day has an important theme:

“Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition”

“Sustainable” means a way of doing something so that you can continue to do it for years and years, decades, even centuries. Here are some practices that AREN'T very sustainable:

  • Growing the same crops in the same field for several years, but using up all the minerals and organic material needed to grow anything ever again. This is called depleting the soil.
  • Using almost all of the land to grow plants that will feed animals that people want to eat. There is far less meat produced from acres and acres of crops, compared to the vegetarian foods produced from the same acreage; and that is why it benefits everybody if you eat less meat and especially less beef. (As food writer Michael Pollan says, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”)
  • Cutting down a rain forest bursting at the seams with diversity – many different plants and animals – to plant a cash crop like coffee...but then losing much of the soil to erosion.

When it comes to food, fresh is better...
Check out PBS's website for information on sustainable agriculture. 

...than processed.
“Food security” is a bigger concern in developing nations than in already-developed nations, although natural disasters or war could certainly affect food security in ANY nation! A group has food security if there is plenty of food, and it is easy to ship, sell, and buy the food. Sometimes a nation has suffered from a severe drought, but people from around the world send food as relief aid. But if that food cannot reach the people who are starving, it's of little use!

Of course, the whole point about food is to get nutrition. People need to eat plenty of protein, a little bit of fat and salt, and some carbohydrates. Learn about nutrition using the Nourish Interactive games and printables.


Also on this date:














Plan Ahead:

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