Eating Green video on demand at Amazon.com
Green cooking and eating seems to be on the mind of many women recently; I’m no exception. Tonia of Study in Brown has redefined her days and Mama Cate is teaching how to make vegetarian lasagna. I’ve been following Peak Oil Hausfrau’s adventures in solar cooking for a few months now and I still plan to make my own rocket stove. 5 Minutes for Going Green tells us about food waste and there are more vegan blogs out there than you can shake a lettuce at! As the weather cools I’ve been studying my collection of vegetarian cookery books and looking forward to the comfort of warm food on cold winter days. I want to do my part in caring for the Earth, I want to feed my family good food, and I want to cut my grocery bill. But what exactly is green cooking and where should I start?
A few weeks back New Scientist ran an article on the greenhouse gas impact of our eating habits – see an extract here. The conclusion was that we can make a bigger impact on climate change by altering our eating habits than by cutting down our mileage. Many people are concerned about buying locally produced food. Of course it makes sense to me that it would be better to eat food that hasn’t been transported half-way across the world, yet the New Scientist article claimed that switching just some of our meals to vegetarian/vegan can have more impact than buying all of our food from local sources. How sound is their argument?
Green consciousness makes me really want to understand some of the environment puzzle. I’d like to have the most impact with the least effort, but it’s a tangle that is proving hard to unravel. So far all I can conclude is that “the devil is in the details”. New Scientist talked about methane release from cattle raised for beef. This was the basis of their calculation for the biggest environmental impact from eating vegetarian. But the beef I eat was raised by a friend of mine who’s cattle live in a pasture and eat mostly grass and hay. New Scientist was not talking about this kind of beef raising. Nonetheless, I neither know the details of the corn the cattle I eat are fed on for fattening up before butchering, nor do I don’t know where the dried beans I might replace beef with are grown and what chemicals are used in their farming. Would the fields of beans be better replaced by prairie? New Scientist has also taught me that prairie is better for locking up carbon and reflecting back sunlight than woodland or farmed fields. But what about the fact that prairie needs burned which produces carbon and Co2?
I’ve not even begun to explore the health issues related to green cooking and vegan eating. If I switched all of my meat eating to beans and soy would I be healthier? Would I be eating more pesticides, or less? How would I find out if food items were grown in this country and understand how they were grown? Would bulk foods be safe for my family member who is allergic to peanuts and can’t eat anything packaged on the same equipment? I’ve read all kinds of things from articles that say soy is wonderful for women to others that say it is harmful for boys. OK, I’m not a boy, but I do have a son who is an adolescent and doesn’t need a diet that contains something resembling female hormones I’m sure. Perhaps I could be excused for stopping at this point to yank on my hair and suppress a short scream!
The only conclusion I can come to is that life is much more complex than most of us would wish. The only things I can fully understand are processes that I am 100% in charge of. So, I guess it’s back to gardening for me – at least that way I know about a few of the things I eat. As regards the rest, I’ll just have to compromise for now and do the best I can with the information available. Moderation seems a sensible approach. I’ve decided to try and supply my family with one vegetarian meal and one meat-based meal a day. I’m not perfect – some days they’ve complained at having two non-meat meals in the one day and other days we’ve probably eaten sausages twice! So far though I’m pretty happy with the way this is going. As to whether it’s more green to eat canned beans than grass-fed beef I really don’t have a clue, but at least it might be less expensive 
Homeschoolers Guide to the Galaxy is an Amazon.com associate site. Shop at Amazon.com’s Green Store.
Related posts:
Good post – it made my head spin though!!
I baked potatoes in my slow cooker/crockpot today – not quite solar but a start!
Julie, I hope I didn’t give you a headache! Isn’t this stuff complicated though, it’s kind of like the whole health issue. How on earth do you figure out what would be the best diet and exercise for your particular body? Every time you read something it seems to conflict with something else you’ve read. No wonder most people just give up in frustration and do what they like rather than try to change habits!
I like crockpot cooking too, though I’m not always organized far enough ahead
You bring up many valid questions, which is why I long ago gave up. The Mountain Man has been vegetarian for almost 20 years, but I haven’t noticed that he’s THAT much healthier than I am. We are typically vegetarian at home but I’ll get a steak or hamburger if we’re out somewhere, and the kids eat chicken nuggets (and God help us, i know where all those things come from, it’s a nightmare). But DeBoy PREFERS morningstar farms Grillers (fake hamburgers) and fake bacon to the real thing, and he eats so little of anything to begin with we don’t argue.
We have a cookbook for vegetarian recipes in the crockpot. If you’re interested holler and I’ll go find the title.
Janet, I’ve heard of so many boys who just eat a minimum number of foods. You are not alone! Kids really do have different experiences with the same foods. Some people in my family are very sensitive to bitter components of foods and the others barely notice bitter. I’ve noticed that the taste buds do get more tolerant with age, which allows for more adventure at some point. In most cases it’s a case of being patient.
Thanks for the offer on the crockpot book name. I am trying to take some time here to actually use the books I already have, so I’ll take a rain check for now
Delurking to say hi…came via ‘5minutesforgoinggreen’
We’re a homeschooling family of 7, all of us are whole food vegans. So this post was an interesting read for me! Adjusting to a green diet is a big change for many, but babysteps and lots of good questions (like the ones you posted) are the way to get there. Good luck on your journey to green cooking!