Food (3): Processing of food
The first part of this food triptych is a more general page about the important role of food in our ecological footprint. In the second part, I gave you tips and considerations to reduce your footprint through healthy eating habbits. In this third and last part, some considerations on the processing of food.
Know your food: various vegetables have many more edible and healthy parts, which, for lack of knowledge, quite often end up in the garbage can or green container. An example: the leaf remnants on a cauliflower contain more vitamins and minerals than the flower (cabbage) itself. Or the stem of broccoli. Cut into small pieces just as quickly cooked as the flower, and highly nutritious.
If you enjoy delving into that, see what wild plants you find in your area, and look up if they are edible (and maybe even medicinal / supporting).
You'll be surprised how many edible plants you'll find in nature that way. From narrow plantain to dandelions, from leaves of the large-leaved lime / large-leaved linden to red clover....
Directly from the plant to the table, with only the water faucet as an intermediate stop.
Humans have been eating more and more processed foods with less nutritional value over the past century. If you start eating healthier and more fresh, and therefore more nutritious, you will find that you can get by with less.
If you also pay attention to a healthy weight, insofar as your body is able to process what you eat in an efficient way, the result is that you can get by with fewer kilos of food. And that, in turn, is very good for your ecological footprint and for your wallet.
Most of us know that a shocking 30% of the food produced worldwide does not end up in people's stomachs. And that while 1 in 9 people go hungry every day....
The bizarre practice of food being rejected by supermarkets because it is not 'pretty' enough is itself a subject for a book. This definitely advocates buying your vegetables directly from an organic farmer, if you even have a chance to do so.
And of course much is also lost in the process until food is in your shopping cart.
Finally, food handling in your kitchen... A few tips:
- try to develop a sense of how much you need in terms of key ingredients for a meal. For example, the two of us eat 330 grams of pasta in a meal, or a kilo of potatoes, or 370 grams of lentil/rice mixture. And the more calorific the vegetables, the less of those "basics" you need, of course. A dish with peas or beans requires less 'base' than a dish with zucchini as a vegetable.
- Become a master of leftover processing. Learn how to incorporate any small leftover into your main dish the next day, or turn it into a side dish or appetizer.
- Reflect on your eating habits and eating rhythms. Healthy snacking in between, if that makes your stomach and intestines feel good: fine.
We like the following eating pattern very much, especially since we don't like to go to sleep with a full stomach: good and hearty breakfast (warm oat and buckwheat porridge with seeds, nuts and fruit), at noon a generous amount of hot meal, and in the evening "only" a bowl of nut mixture and a cracker with toppings or a dessert of a bowl of buckwheat porridge with some fruit. In between a small piece of chocolate with the morning cup of coffee and twice a cookie with afternoon and evening tea (1 small size oat cookie with little sugar in it ;), and that was about it. Oh yes, in harvest season of course a fresh apple, pear and/or couple of plums right out of the tree.
As you read: there are lots of starting points to do something about reducing your ecological footprint through what you eat.
If you have questions, want to share your thoughts and experiences or if there is something you want more information about: please respond with a comment on the blog post or send me an email.
Artwork: Plum blossom
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