Living Green, One Tip at a Time - (a weekly feature)

Living Green, One Tip at a Time - 

#8 - Your Food (part 3)

· Healthy School Lunches: Support efforts to increase healthy food choices in school lunches.

· Green Calculator: Learn about the effect your diet is having on the environment with the Eating Green Calculator.

· Score Your Diet: Learn how your diet scores on nutrition, the environment and animal welfare with Score Your Diet.

· Non-GMO: There are many organizations that are working to protect our food supply from genetically engineered produce. Please get involved in any way you can. Whenever possible, buy products containing non-GMO soy, cotton, and corn. Ask your local supermarket to carry non-GMO products and ask your friends to also make this request - have faith that your requests will get back to the growers and store headquarters. This trend will only turn around when customer demand non-GMO products. Your pocketbook is your most effective voice.

· Unprocessed Food: Eat unprocessed/unpackaged food whenever possible.

· Smart Seafood: If you purchase seafood, consult a seafood choices chart to select environmentally smart seafood. Also, learn more about avoiding mercury in your seafood at NRDC

· “Dolphin Safe" Tuna: Only purchase tuna labeled "dolphin safe".

· Shade-Grown Coffee: Buy shade-grown coffee to protect desperately needed migratory bird habitats. Many "fair trade certified" coffees are shade-grown.

· Free-Range: If you eat meat, buy "free-range" raised animals. According to the EPA, "there are approximately 450,000 AFOs (Animal feeding operations - livestock-raising operations, such as hog, cattle and poultry farms, that confine and concentrate animal populations) in the United States. About 6,600 of these operations fall into the largest category and are referred to as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

· Books:  Books on organic food and switching to a vegan diet 

The information contained in this post was obtained, with permission, from the following site -

http://www.globalstewards.org/ecotips.htm#reduce

Monica