Day 29: You Are What You Eat - Part 1

The more I read, learn, watch documentaries, etc.. the more I realize that, while eating local is important, in the grand scheme it is what you are eating and, well, how it came to be on your plate that are more important.

A lot of the things we eat just aren't good for us or the planet. A prime example is meat. Most meats are not sustainable, especially in the way we North Americans consume them.

On Day 2 of this challenge, I suggested eating low on the food chain, here are some facts/ideas from Dr. David Suzuki's Green Guide (pg 46) about why this is so important:

-Raising livestock contributes more to climate change than the world-wide transportation sector.

- Producing meat uses vast volumes of water. Beef requires 13 000 liters per kg, and chicken requires 6 000 liters per kg (and of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, 1 kg of potatoes only takes 100 liters).

-Cattle, pigs and chickens produce approximately 5 tons of manure per North American per year.

-In the Amazon, millions of hectares of rainforest have been cut down for livestock grazing and feed crops since the 1970s.

-Globally, the volume of wild fish caught has increased almost 500% in the past 50 years, while populations of large fish -sharks, tuna, swordfish among others, have crashed by 90%.

-More than ninety nations, including the US and Canada, are guilty of overfishing (meaning that within their territorial waters they catch fish faster than the fish populations can reproduce).

Some great documentaries to watch, although I suspect Micheal-Moore-esque type biases, are Food Inc. and Food Matters. They investigate food as it travels from farm to table, and raise some really interesting points. (Food Matters can be seen on documentaryheaven.com and Food Inc is on the CBC website).

I'm already eating low on the food chain, and have been a vegetarian for about three years, which is a great start, but most of the food I eat is cooked. I make a lot of soups and casseroles etc. But, it is becoming increasingly apparent that for our own sake and that of the planet, we need to eat more raw food (Let me clarify, I don't mean beef....raw beef would be terrible - what I mean is fruits, veggies, nuts, sprouts, grains, beans etc)

In Food Matters, they suggest that at least 51% of your diet should consist of raw food. It is believed that heating food above 45 degrees Celsius diminishes the nutritional value of the food by destroying enzymes in the food that aid in digestion and absorption.  The raw food diet is also lower in trans and saturated fats, lower in sodium, higher in fiber and potassium, folate and magnesium than the traditional western diet. It also comes with less packaging and generally takes less energy to produce, and you don't have to fire up that stove!

So, I am no nutritional expert, but it does seem to make a lot of sense. I mean, don't we always hear that we should eat more fruits and vegetables? If we can eat more locally produced or organic raw food that's great.

But we do have to look at the other side of the coin. A lot of our fruits and veggies have to be imported from other countries, and, for instance, commercial banana production is an environmental disaster with high pesticide usage effecting plantation workers, rivers, and well... the whole planet! So, it's not so clear-cut what we should do and there aren't really any general rules other than to think critically about where your food comes from, what you are eating and how you are preparing it. 


As for me, I am going to try and increase the raw food portion of my diet to over 50% and continue to read labels, signs, do research and think critically about where my food comes from. 


What do you think?

(Also ... 1000 pages views! thanks everyone!)