Meals and Groceries
Tips for a healthy and sustainable kitchen.
Tips for a healthy and sustainable kitchen
Hello! Happy to share a few tips with you on simple ways to prioritize your health and the planet today.
As always, it’s important to work towards bettering your decisions but not feeling guilty when you don’t do everything perfectly. It’s difficult to know where your realm of impact begins and ends, but every positive effort is worthwhile and meaningful.
There’s also an immense amount of privilege associated with access to fresh produce, the time and ability to cook multiple meals a day at home, and shopping at natural grocery stores. These ideas are meant for those with the means to implement them. Here’s an array of resources surrounding accessibility for healthy foods. Let’s jump in.
01 — Focus on cooking at home as often as possible, and meal prepping to make things easy on yourself.
A great deal of food waste is involved in takeout and fast food: packaging is generally made up of single-use plastic and even if it isn’t, it’s usually gotten grease or food on it and therefor isn’t recyclable. There are so many tangents to go into in regards to fast food or take-out, but to put it simply: no matter where you’re eating on a regular basis, it’s a good idea to be aware of what ingredients are in your food and to find out where they’re sourced from.
Cooking at home cuts back on so much waste since you’re preparing food with a general idea as to how much you’ll eat, what leftovers you’ll end up with, etc. Meal prepping is nice because it gives you options to grab from the fridge when you don’t feel like cooking, and saves you from ordering take-out last minute.
For me, meal prepping usually looks like washing all produce and organizing it in the fridge when I get home from the store, chopping and storing scallions or other greens that I like to throw on top of most dishes, adding greens to my salad spinner and rinsing, etc.
02 Shop at the right grocery stores.
I have a couple grocery stores on rotation that prioritize sourcing locally-made goods, use minimal packaging, have lots of bulk options and loose-leaf products. (If you’re in Portland, check out New Seasons Market, Alberta Co-Op and Natural Grocers.)
I’ve committed to making a trip to the store a concentrated effort: I’ll bring about 6 mason jars, 5-10 produce bags, 5-8 tote bags and a few rubber bands from home. I keep the tare weight of the mason jars written on top and fill them up with bulk goods like chickpeas and other beans, flours, nuts, dates, etc. I use produce bags for loose-leaf arugula, rainbow chard and other herbs and veggies.
03 — Set yourself up for success.
Leave a little kit in your car: tote bag with mason jar, insulated coffee mug, chapstick, reusable utensils and a small towel or recycled paper towel. You’ll be ready for a spontaneous picnic, grab-and-go lunch, coffee or smoothie while you’re out.
04 — Read labels.
As far as food goes, a few basic things to avoid whenever possible are: cane sugar, enriched wheat flour, canola oil, palm oil, artificial flavors and colors, GMOs and trans fats. Please read up on the effects of these ingredients on your health if you haven’t looked into this before. Most of these are ultimately cancer or disease-causing carcinogens that we’re not being protected from.
For instance, The American Council on Science and Health receives funding from chemical, oil and pharmaceutical companies like Monsanto, Dow USA, Exxon, and Union Carbide, as well as from food and beverage interest like Burger King, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. The interest of corporations is prioritized over the health of unassuming consumers. (Source)
To circle back to the initial thought, most of these ingredients are found in highly processed foods, so read those labels and look for the “NON-GMO verified project” label or the Organic label.
05 — Consider what you’re drinking.
Whether that’s soda, alcohol, juice, sparkling water or other drinks, here are a few things to consider: What are the additives? Is this can lined with BPA? How much sugar is in this?
Ideal sweeteners for drinks are monk fruit, date extract or stevia leaf extract as they’re plant-based. This definitely limits options, but there are so many amazing alternatives to soda:
Kombucha brands like GT’s and Spruce are great and both have relatively low amounts of sugar.
CBD sodas like Recess are readily available in states where CBD can be sold at the store, and they’re often low on sugar, made with organic ingredients and super flavorful.
Zevia and LIVE Soda are excellent for a real soda craving. Zevia is sweetened with stevia leaf extract and has no other additives. They have flavors like cream soda, root beer and strawberry soda. On the shelf, they look rather unassuming but they taste incredibly authentic. Live Sodas are essentially soda-flavored kombucha. They taste a lot more like soda than kombucha, in my opinion, and the Dr. Pepper dupe is a treat.
Some other thoughts on drinks: make sure your cans are BPA-free. Many cans don’t say whether they are or not, but BPA has adverse long-term health effects that are worth avoiding. If you’re drinking wine, going with natural, biodynamic or organic is a great call health-wise. Conventional Wine can have up to 60 additives per bottle that don’t have to be called out in the label, due to a lack of regulation over the industry. Natural wines don’t have undisclosed additives and are a safer choice in the long run.
As for regular water: make sure you’re filtering it if you’re able to!
All photos are edited with Solstice Presets.
Disclosure: I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you decide to purchase from brands that I refer to and promote. All opinions are my own.