Monday 27 January 2014

The White Stuff

With a new year comes new resolutions, quite a lot of which relate to food. Eating less of it, eating better things, making more from scratch and thinking about how what we consume affects the planet. 

Last year I tried to kick start myself into having at least one veggie day a week. It worked quite well, but I don't think it made me eat more healthily. Evening meals of macaroni cheese or home made pizza are delicious (even if I say so myself) but swapping lean meats like chicken for dairy products like cheese probably won't make me any leaner. 

But the reason for trying to cut back on meat was mainly for environmental reasons not the health benefits. According to the Vegetarian Society's website eating less meat will reduce my carbon footprint, save water, save land and protect the seas. Sounds pretty good! At the moment, I'm having roughly 2 veggie days a week, which isn't fantastic in green terms but is better than nothing. However, is my switch from meat to dairy products really any better for the environment?

As long as I'm consuming animal products the animals still need to be grown, fed and given water to survive. It's common knowledge that animals use more land than plants to grow, and lots more water too. According to vegetarian author John Robbins it takes 60, 108, 168 and 229 pounds of water to produce one pound of potatoes, wheat, maize and rice respectively. A pound of beef needs more than 20,000 pounds of water and to produce one litre of milk it takes nearly 1,000 litres of water. That's a lot.

So, should I be cutting out dairy products, or even all animals products too?

I'm not ready to go vegan or fully veggie yet, but for the environment I can see that we need to eat less meat and probably consume less dairy too. But it doesn't have to be one after another, I don't have to tackle full vegetarianism before I can move onto cutting back on other animal products.

So that's the new aim, keep up two veggie days a week, but start to cut back on milk, cheese, butter and eggs as well. 

In some ways this is quite easy. Nice healthy salads for lunch rather than my normal boring cheese sandwiches actually feel like an improvement tastewise as well as for health and the green credentials; while cooking vegetable soup on cold January evenings is warming as well as healthy (it's amazing how few calories mushrooms and celery have!). 

Breakfasts is where it gets harder. A nice bowl of British grown oats with some dried fruit and milk is a great start to my day and it keeps me full right up until lunchtime salad. But what about that milk? 

Over the last week I've been trying out soya milk (sweetened and unsweetened). So far, it's a success. It adds a nutty taste to my cereal (oats really don't taste very exciting) and while I was very wary about using it in tea it turns out to taste different, but good. I've bought a carton of almond milk too, to try out over the next week or so. We were surprised to find similar levels of calcium in soya milk compared to cows milk too, even if artificially added it still gives you what you need.

So, cutting back on dairy as well as meat might not be too hard after all. Keeping away from cheese and butter will definitely be healthier too! But there's still a niggling doubt about soya, and that's the rainforests.

I've always heard that rainforests are cut down to grow soya for milk and other products. I'm careful about what else I buy if it affects the rainforests, so does swapping to soya milk really do more good than bad? I'm not sure yet. But a vegan friend pointed out last summer that there is far more rainforest cut down for meat than there currently is for soya farms. Whatever we eat has to be grown somewhere and hopefully soya will need less land to grow than dairy milk. 

Cutting back completely is obviously the best solution, but a diet of UK grown organic veg and pulses doesn't fill me with excitement. So for now its one veggie day and one vegan day a week with less cheese and butter, and soya over dairy milk whenever I can. We'll see how it goes!

Monday 20 January 2014

Spring In My Step

Even though it's still January it's beginning to feel a lot like spring already. A bright sunny walk along the Exe floodplain on Sunday morning gave some beautiful views, sights of kingfisher, even buds and flowers on the trees. 



With the hawthorn coming into bud (even before it has leaves) it's not surprising there are catkins all over the place too. I love the range of colours they appear in, purple right through to greeny yellow; covering the trees like leftover fairy lights.


 As well as all this new growth there's the reliable gorse still in flower. Looking bright and cheerful these flowers can be used to make a delicious ice cream.

With all this wonderful seasonal change it's time to get outside and rediscover nature. This weekend is a fantastic time to do it too with the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch happening all across the UK. Count the wildlife that's counting on you and help to give nature a home this year. It only takes an hour and will definitely bring a smile to your face as you spend an hour watching nature. I can't think of a better way to spend the weekend!

Monday 13 January 2014

Starting Anew

Amazingly, it's been over a month since my last blog. Life got in the way.

So, after a somewhat extended Christmas break, I'm back. Over the next few weeks there will be more blogs on green weddings, on the green worries when buying a new car, on my continued struggles with shopping and cooking without waste or green guilt, on a computer free fortnight and on all the other green topics that are buzzing around my head.

2014 has been a good year for wildlife spotting so far. On a drive through the midlands yesterday evening I saw red kites soaring, hares hopping and foxes creeping through fields. It was magical. This morning whilst hanging some washing up (a pleasure I don't get in Exeter) I enjoyed birdsong all around me. Blackbirds seem to be everywhere and robins are signing from the treetops.

I had lots of lovely new things for Christmas, but I'm not sure anyone of them make me smile quite as much as nature.