All food related activities and those that bring food to stores have an impact on the environment.  It’s easy to lose touch with the land and where food comes from when we live and/or work in a bustling city.  Eating “green” means we’re looking after our bodies as well the planet.

Eat a little less meat to save some land - You can produce more food with a given patch of land by growing plant foods than you can by grazing cattle.  Canada is among the top three meat-consuming nations on the planet.  We eat more than twice the global average.  Try to replace one meal a week with a vegetarian alternative such as Indian Lentil Curry, Veggie Burgers or Mexican Bean Tacos.  Even though North American regulations prevent cattle from being fed to other cattle, dead pigs, horses and poultry are still fed to commercially grown cattle, along with sawdust, old newspapers and anything else that might contain a bit of cheap protein to help fatten them*. The industry also uses antibiotics and steroids to increase growth rates and reduce infections.  These substances can cause antibiotic resistance in humans.

Buy sustainable seafood - Canada’s marine ecosystems are being destroyed, and one of the main causes is bottom trawling.  Bottom trawling is the practice where nets weighted with heavy rollers and trawl doors are dragged along the ocean floor.  It’s like clearcutting the ocean floor**.  Sustainable seafood is harvested in limited quantities from limited stocks to ensure different species aren’t overfished, marine habitat is preserved and pollution is prevented.  Try to avoid farmed salmon which releases large amounts of waste, parasites and antibiotics into the surrounding waters, threatening native salmon and other marine wildlife.

Check out OceanWise, a Vancouver Aquarium program created to help restaurants and their customers make sustainable seafood choices.  SeaChoice, a Canadian company, publishes an alert card that you can carry with you when shopping or dining.

Support local farmers - For Canadians, the average meal travels about 2,400 km to get from the field to the dinner table.  Many fruits are picked before they are ripe so that they can be transported over long distances, ripening along the way.  Huge amounts of fuel are used for the fruit to reach their final destinations.  These fruits are usually lower in nutritional value and don’t taste as good as locally grown produce.  Eating local also reduces your risk of exposure to dangerous chemicals.  Transported produce is overloaded with chemical pesticides to prevent mould and fungus during shipping.  Eat local and you will taste the difference.

Check out SPUD, a local sustainable food provider in both Vancouver and Calgary.  They offer produce from local family farms, artisan meats and cheeses, sustainable seafood and fresh bread!

Try This!

Try making a picnic with no waste.  Replace those paper napkins with cloth, and don’t pack anything that can’t be composted, re-used or recycled.  Take a basket to your closest local market and fill up on fresh fruit and veggies, all of which don’t require extra packaging.

Local Farmer’s Markets:

Calgary:

• www.calgaryarea.com/community/eventspsa/farmers/farmermarket.htm
• www.calgaryfarmersmarket.ca
• www.blackfootfarmersmarket.com

Vancouver:

• www.eatlocal.org
• www.rawbc.org/markets.html
• www.northshorefarmersmarkets.com

*  Source: The David Suzuki Foundation.
** Source: The David Suzuki Foundation.