Green Diet Ch.1

For my final post of chapter 1 green diet of my 21 day challenge I will be looking at the waste side of my diet. I’ve already accomplished the making changes to what I’m consuming in the previous post but now I need to work on making how I buy that food to be less impactful.

When shopping as a family we tend to buy few fruits and vegetables from local farmers markets but rather the prepackaged ones from the grocery stores. Also living far from a Costco we tend to not buy in bulk but rather smaller package quantities. Another negatively impact full thing I realized about our food shopping habits is that I personally tend to buy individually wrapped things for school lunches. Although a green diet it’s important to be consuming things that are good for the environment it’s also important to be buying things that aren’t causing any other harm such as individually wrapped granola bars, or corn on the cob that comes in a styrofoam tray and plastic wrap around it.

The issue with grocery store bought produce is the throwaway plastic most fruits and vegetables are wrapped in. Food packaging takes up 50% total of packaging sales. The purpose for food packaging is to protect the food, give you information on the food and for many things to market their brand. 1/3 of the average dump is made up of packaging materials many of which come from food packaging. Local food on the other hand not only is good for your own health (helps with allergies and is more nutritious), but it also is fresher, is ripened naturally, you’re eating food that’s in season and environmentally is not transported across the country to but it also is fresher, is ripened naturally, you’re eating food that’s in season and environmentally is not transported across the country to a grocery store causing greenhouse gas emissions and is also not individually package but rather late out naturally in order to be purchased. Local food is also normally a smaller production meaning there are less harmful chemicals used on crops and more manual labour then large emission machines.

So in order to make a difference I decided to purchase our vegetables for the week at a local farm instead of going and buying the plastic wrapped vegetables at our local grocery store. Not only is the food not wrapped in plastic and grown locally but the local farm is also closer and a shorter drive than the main stream grocery store. I also decided that buying in bulk and making my own school snacks instead of buying them pre made would make a huge difference in my “green diet”. I went to two local markets to buy my vegetables such as asparagus (it’s an awkward time for in season fruits and vegetables; strawberries soon) as well as the Brockville Bulk Food Barn to buy school snacks such as pumpkin seeds, chocolate covered raisins, cashews, plantain chips etc. Pro tip: bring light mesh reusable bags to replace bulk food barns plastic ones.