With its clean slate and possibilities for new beginnings, the start of a new year is the perfect time to implement the types of habits you want to build in the coming months. Whether you want to exercise more, spend less time looking at screens, or give up something you know isn’t helping you, change somehow feels more possible in these first days of the year. So let’s take advantage of the abundant transformational energy in these quiet winter days by looking at a few simple things we can do this year to better nourish our bodies and support the health of our planet.
Embrace a plant-based diet
While there may be a lot of conflicting information about the healthiest and most sustainable ways to eat, the one thing that almost everyone seems to agree on is that consuming more calories from plant-based foods is a good idea. Research shows that plant-based diets can improve longevity and reduce the risk of certain conditions. Furthermore, a major UN report shows that eating a plant-based diet is one of the most powerful individual contributions we can make in the fight against climate change. Of Vegan happening all month long, there’s no better time than to take the plunge.
What exactly is a plant-based diet? Unlike a vegan or vegetarian diet, plant-based doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding animal products completely unless that seems like the right choice for you. Instead, it’s about making sure the majority of your daily calories come from plant-based sources like vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, and whole grains. For many of us, this could mean limiting our consumption of animal products to just once or twice a week, or making sure we dedicate the majority of the space on our plates to plant-based foods. That’s why I like the term ‘plant-based’; it allows for a degree of flexibility rather than creating rigid rules that can make people feel like they’ve failed if they can’t always stick to them, or prevent them from trying in the first place.
Think local
Whether it’s planting a garden or buying more produce from local farms this year, eating food grown near where you live is a win-win. Products that only have to travel a short distance between the ground and your plate not only have a dramatically smaller carbon footprint, but are also typically tastier and richer in nutrients than their supermarket counterparts. This is because it reaches the consumer so quickly, ensuring freshness and allowing harvest at the peak of its ripeness.
This year I’m signing up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscription through a farm near where I live, which will give me a generous box of veggies each week and make it easy to get my five veggies a week. day.
Most farms offer something like this, many with egg and meat options. Although you can indicate which basic products you always want, the nice thing is that you often get things that you would not normally choose, such as kohlrabi or celeriac. This will help you diversify your diet if you tend to rely on a few old standards — and it might also mean you discover a few new favorites.
Ditch Plastic
As unpleasant as it is to think about, research definitively shows that plastic is in our food, our drinking water, the air we breathe and in our bodies. A 2019 study calculated that the average American consumes more than 74,000 microplastic particles annually – that’s thousands of particles per day. The problem is that many of these particles wreak havoc on our bodies: they disrupt our endocrine systems, disrupt our immune systems, and cause the types of cellular changes that lead to a bad inflammatory response.
While it may seem like plastic is so insidious in our environment that it’s impossible to avoid it completely, there are steps we can take to dramatically reduce our exposure. The best practice is to choose not to buy food packaged in plastic when you can avoid it – including plastic bags and containers, plastic bottles and cans, or other packaging materials coated with BPAs. The benefit of this approach is that it automatically steers you away from the kinds of processed and refined foods that are bad for us in the first place.
The other important thing is to make sure you don’t store your food in plastic containers. Invest in glass Tupperware for your leftovers, switch to silicone bags to store your snacks, and buy as many pantry ingredients as possible in bulk, storing them in glass jars or cans. It may seem like an investment at first, but the long-term benefits for your health and that of the environment are well worth it.
Here’s to a happy, healthy and more sustainable 2021!
Writer Danielle Charles Davies has a BSc in Herbal Sciences from Bastyr University and completed the two-year clinical training program at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism in Montpelier, VT. Her articles have appeared in Taproot, The Journal of the American Herbalist Guild, and Kindred Magazine, among others. She lives in Northern Michigan with her husband, two dogs and eight ducks. She blogs at www.bluemoonkitchen.com.
For educational purposes only. This information has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, or to sell any product.
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