Eating Can Be a Breath of Fresh Air or
Where Food and Fossil Fuels Collide
by Robin Wheeler, Owner, Edible Landscapes

You’ve heard the saying “you are what you eat”, but might be surprised to know that you are also breathing what you eat! North American diets are now largely made up of foods grown hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, creating a lot of those nasty greenhouse gas emissions because of the huge increase in trucking. Our food choices affect food production and distribution, and making new choices will decrease the number of vehicles on the road and fumes in the air.

- Grow your own! Experiment with a small garden, and slowly add a new food group each year – potatoes, herb teas, garlic and beans for soup are good, simple choices that will keep a truck or two off the road.

- Greens such as chard and kale, which are easily grown in the garden all winter, are an incredible improvement, both nutritionally and environmentally, over imported greens that have been raised in a fuel-consuming greenhouse.

- Buy locally. Shopping at roadside stalls and farmers’ markets during your daily chores will have many repercussions besides cleaner air. Choose crops like squash, potatoes and carrots that will keep for a long time.

- Buy items in bulk to keep those car trips down. Share with a neighbour if that makes buying in quantity more affordable.

- Encourage your grocer to buy locally whenever possible.

- Eat seasonally. Choosing BC blueberries and apples is a “cleaner” choice than imported, off-season strawberries.

- Search for equivalents to those foods that came to you on a truck – instead of frozen waffles for breakfast, try home grown fried potatoes and local eggs. Check to see where your herb tea blends come from, and then plant your own combinations and grow your own.

- Avoid processed foods that not only involved trucks on the highway, but factory fuels as well. For instance, you might try (BC made) cheese sauce poured over steamed potatoes and carrots, rather than over a plate of macaroni. You will get a nutrient boost, as well.

- Eat your weeds! Go to the library and search for books on wild berries and edible plants. Salal berries, violet leaves, chickweed, wood sorrel and many more plants could supplement our salads and jam jars, without a single whiff of fuel fumes.

People have a lot more power over their air quality than they think. It just takes a little planning, some thinking (no gas emissions there!) and the realization that they really do have power over their environment.

Robin Wheeler is the owner of Edible Landscaping and author of the Gardening Book Gardening for the Faint of Heart.