Green Tips - Eating
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Eat Locally- Eat Organic
- Eat Fair-trade
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- Watch out for packaging!
- Compost...
- Home Grown
- Local Shopping
- Planning
- The Crispness of Raw Food
- No Meat, No Problem!
By eating seasonal, local foods you do a great service to the environment. Most of our food currently is shipped from far away and takes a lot of energy and resources to get it to your table. This includes energy for transport and cooling as well as the increased amount of packaging that some products need to ship them long distances. Local food often uses less packaging and generally tastes better. Since Israel grows a lot of its own produce, there are a lot of fruits and vegetables that are seasonal. Working your diet and menu around these seasons will lower your carbon footprint and improve the taste of your food. Fruits and vegetables taste better when they are in season and tend to be cheaper as well.
Note: often organic food that is shipped over long distances loses the benefits that it initially had over non-organic foods. My advice is to eat locally first and then organically.
In Israel, supermarkets do not explicitly tell you where the food is coming from but there are many markets around Israel that will sell local produce. These markets are hectic but tend to be cheaper.
Despite the problems with transporting organic food over long distances, certified organic food is better for everyone. The workers and land are not subject to harmful chemicals and most importantly for your body, you do not have to eat these chemicals. There are many studies claiming that organic food is no healthier than non-organic food. To respond, the chemicals on our food are not natural. They are used to prevent the natural occurrence of bugs and rotting. Generally speaking, eating natural is the way to go. On a more psychological side, the placebo effect has been proven countless times. Even if for some reason organic food is not better for you, the idea that you are not putting chemicals in your body is still doing a lot for your health. There are many organic supermarkets spread across Israel. Keep your eyes open and find a market close to you.
This tip is useful for the general well being of our planet. Currently, a lot of our food is underpriced. This is because of a few reasons, two of which are: cheap oil and cheap labour. Often workers are treated extremely unfairly and live on the brink of starvation. The relation to being green is that companies that are responsible and practice fair-trade are often the same companies that have much higher environmental standards. Always a good idea to search out fair-trade products and you will often find environmental certifications alongside.
במעגלי צדק (Bema'aglei Tzedek) is a organization that will certify restaurants if they respect the legally-mandated rights of their employees and are accessible to people with disabilities. There is a list of these certified restaurants in English and Hebrew.
Try to avoid products with a lot of packaging. There are usually alternatives that do not have the same amount of packaging. For instance, do not buy individually wrapped snacks. These have unnecessary plastic packaging (most of which is petroleum-based plastics). Try to buy in bulk. If you want to transport your food try using reusable tupperware or, even better, wash out and reuse old food containers like old cottage cheese containers.
If you can’t reuse, try to recycle the packaging that you do end up with. Israel has a less than stellar recycling program so it can be tough. Blue paper recycling bins are scattered across Israel. They are often located next to the plastic bottle recycling boxes. If you do not find a bin close by contact your municipality and ask about paper recycling bins in your area. They do provide them and collect them depending on how much they are used. If you live in an apartment building and can gather enough combined paper recycling throughout the building, the city is more likely to give your building its own blue bin. Many businesses have these blue bins but it is time to increase residential recycling.
Another important tip is to take reusable bags when you go grocery shopping. I am offered a plastic bag when I buy anything here in Israel. On one trip to the market, if I am not paying attention, I can end up with 6-10 plastic bags. Bring reusable bags and remember to decline a plastic bag when offered.
If you willing, carrying around a reusable plate, fork, knife, spoon, and cup can really diminish all the throwaway utensils that you find at street venders. It is hard to remember to use these bring-along utensils but with practise it will come natural. In my bag, along with all those reusable utensils, I carry a reusable aluminum water bottle and a small Tupperware for the leftovers at restaurants.
This step is a bit difficult to do in Israel as faster composting uses water yet it is still possible to have an outdoor compost pile. A residential compost would work yet in the confined living spaces of the big cities in Israel it might be uncomfortable for you and your neighbours. There are alternatives. Vermicomposting is a great alternative and all you need is earthworms (‘Perionyx excavates’ is a good type of worm for Israel). This process involves a container that has a lid (to keep them from escaping) filled with some soil and earth worms. You simply break your organic waste into small bits and put it in the bin. There should be no smell once the lid is closed.
Another more expensive alternative is an urban compost device. This devise uses heat and pressure to turn your compost into rich soil in only 7 to 10 days. It comes with a hefty price tag but is small, odourless and aesthetically pleasing. NatureMill has a solid product.
More info on composting techniques
Whether you live in an apartment in the city or a house in a Kibbutz what is more organic and local then growing your own food. You can get substantial amount of food from a small garden and feel great about it too. You can use the compost you have recently created to keep your plants healthy and lushes.
Just as buying locally grown food cuts on “miles per calorie,” buying from local sellers cuts back on emissions, fuel consumption, and unnecessary traffic. The main cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are extremely congested so going to the grocery stores can have a much bigger footprint than the actual kilometres dictate.
I way to curb excess waste is to plan your meals a bit better. Try to cook no more then you are going to eat or eat as leftovers. Less waste also saves you money and the disgusting task of fishing out the moulding food from your fridge. Another idea is to get creative and use leftovers in new meals. These inventive meal ideas often end up tasting much better than you would think.
There are many advocates that discuss the wonders of eating all your food raw. There are certainly many health benefits for certain items. There is also the benefit of not using all that energy to cook your food. Also, raw food tends to be fresher and more likely grown locally than shipped over long distances. The markets in Israel offer extremely fresh produce.
Meat is the most resource-intensive food on the table and eating less of it can be the single most green move a person makes. Producing meat requires huge amounts of water, grain, land, and other inputs including hormones and antibiotics, and leads to pollution of soil, air, and water. A pound of beef requires around 19,000 litres (5,000 gallons) of water to produce, compared to 227 Litres (60 gallons) for a pound of potatoes and 100 Litres (25 gallons) to produce a pound of wheat. A totally vegetarian diet requires only 1,150 litres (300 gallons) of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 15,140 Litres (4,000 gallons) of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year. more info
Israel has many great inventions for minimizing the water used for its produce. Nonetheless, producing meat puts a huge burden on the already dangerously low water reserves and Kineret. Going vegetarian is not only helping the world but also the water crisis in Israel. As a result of kosher laws, there are many diary and vegetarian restaurants in Israel. Also, the quality of the produce in Israel makes being a vegetarian much easier.
The amount of energy and resources put into raising animals is not comparable to the little that we receive by eating it. It makes more sense for us to eat the figurative food that we give to animals. It would be more efficient to use the land they graze on and the grain they eat for our own consumption.
This means that becoming a vegetarian is one of the best ways to help the environment. If you are not ready to make that step, cutting out one meat meal a week or, even better, a day would be a big step to improving your environmental footprint. If that is still a tough step, try removing red meat (beef) from your diet. Beef is the most intensive meet of them all.
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