Great Green Idea: Green Eating: Eat Local Meat or 1-2 Vegetarian Meals per Week

Eat Local Meat or 1-2 Vegetarian Meals per Week

Most of us who are not farmers can only express our connections with nature in one of three ways-by visiting it, by joining organizations, and by eating the food that nature has to offer. The third way is one of the easiest way but most of us don't know how to do it.

Here are some ways on why and how we can start eating local.

1. Taste the Difference

Local meats are fresher and taste better, and they last longer too, while doing less damage to the environment. Factory farms in the United States are producing 350 million tons of manure each year, polluting miles of rivers and lakes and contaminating groundwater. Valuable water and land resources are squandered for meat production.

2. Be Wise

Millions of vegans and vegetarians enjoy excellent health and live longer lives than their meat-eating counterparts live. Eating fewer processed products, having a wider variety of foods, and eating more fresh foods at their nutritional peak will make you feel better than ever. Buying fresh vegetables and serving them 1-2 times per week will never make you feel the need to count calories. Vegetables can easily be added to soups and salads.

When we buy imported or manufactured foods, we pay more due to the additional costs of electricity, packaging, advertising, transportation, and labor. Vegetables and fruits grown by local farmers use nothing but fertilizer, earth, water, and seeds, with minimum amount of pesticides or even without any of it. Check labels and packaging. Ask, "What are the sprays used?" Even though farm stands make you think of local produce, some items could be from far away.

3. Preserve Green Space

By buying foods grown and raised closer to where you live, you help maintain farmland and green spaces in your area. Vegetables grown locally also look nicer because of how they were tended. Farmers monitor their crops to ensure that they remain pest free. They avoid pesticides and artificial fertilizers; instead, they use natural pesticides such as beneficial insects and chemical free-fertilizer. Pesticides take a toll on the environment and frequently spawn pesticide-resistant pests. Farmers would want to grow products that have market demand. By consuming vegetables, we lend nature a hand. We not only eat healthy but we contribute to saving our planet.

4. Promote Food Safety

When you know where your food comes from and who grows it, you know a lot more about your food. Food with less distance to travel from farm to plate is less susceptible to harmful contamination.

5. Strengthen the economy

When you buy direct from local farmers, your dollars stay within your community, where they strengthen the local economy. Money that remains in the local economy does more good if it is recycled through the purchase of local goods and services than if it leaks away to external economies.

Eating local meat and vegetables is better for you, for the environment, and for your taste buds. When you visit the countryside and the seaside and buy their products, you are actually helping the local economy and helping yourself be healthy. Understanding where our food comes from, and what risk it has to our health and to the environment, will help us make better choices.