A Challenge To The Vegan (and Raw Food) Community:
Clean Up What You Eat

by Mike Lieberman

   One of the benefits of their diet that's always touted by vegans and raw foodies is the claim that maintaining a vegan and/or raw food lifestyle is environmentally friendly. Of course, eating produce is more environmentally sound than eating a factory farmed animal in that no animals were harmed or fed an unnatural diet. Excessive natural resources were not used to produce the food, and no potentially toxic gases were let off into the atmosphere. But will the vegan/raw community rise to the challenge and change their habits to make all of their choices eco-friendly?

Plastic packaging

   Problem: Plastic is one of the biggest offenders. So many health food stores wrap their produce in plastic that the store might as well be wrapped in it. Is it really necessary to have those twenty raw chocolate covered goji berries encased in plastic wrapping? Or to leave the store with your plastic wrapped items held in a plastic bag?
   Challenge: Don't purchase items that are wrapped in plastic packaging. Find a store that sells unwrapped produce. Reuse or recycle paper or plastic bags, or bring homemade produce bags. Then bring your own reusable shopping bags for checkout. It's one of the simplest things you can do. 

Soy and Tofu

Problem: A lot of vegans eat tofu and soy based products. This is a problem from an environmental standpoint (and a health standpoint) because it's reported that nearly 90% of the soy grown in the United States is Monsanto's genetically modified (GMO) soy.
   The full effects of GMO products on health and the environment aren't completely known, but we all have our suspicions that they aren't good for either (considering the excessive pesticide use with GMO crops, from an environmental standpoint, avoiding GMOs is a no brainer). If you are going to say that eating meat is bad for the environment, is eating GMO soy that much better?
   Challenge: Make sure you are buying non-GMO soy and tofu products or just cut them out from your diet all together.

Eat Local

   Problem: People are eating exotic raw foods such as cacao, goji berries, spirulina and out of season foods that are shipped across the globe. Where are these grown? How are they grown? How are those crop workers treated?  
   Think about all the resources used to transport exotic and out of season produce to our mouths. It doesn't make environmental

sense.
   Challenge: Buylocal produce in season. Buying local helps to drastically reduce your food carbon footprint and you will be supporting the local economy as well.

Juicing

   Problem: Raw foodies swear by their green juices. When making green juice at home, what happens to all that pulp? Is it tossed into the garbage and sent to the landfill? Does it go down the garbage disposal and into the water supply?
   Challenge: Find other uses for that pulp. Common uses are composting or  as a base for crackers.

Restaurant Owners

   Problem: You can imagine the amount of food scraps a vegan restaurant generates. Too often the scraps go into the trash and are sent to the local landfill.  
   Challenge: Instead of just tossing the food scraps, send them to be composted. There are services that set you up with bins and pick up your food scraps for just that purpose.
   You don’t have to completely eliminate cacao from your diet or never eat blueberries in the winter, but if you are going to talk the environmental talk, can you walk the walk as well?

   The challenge has been laid out. Will you accept it?
   Check out Mike Lieberman’s websites where he documents what he's doing to live a sustainable lifestyle. In Urban Organic Gardener he is grows an organic vegetable garden on his Manhattan fire escape. In Simply Raw Recipes , he shows his raw vegan recipes. In 365 Ways To Go Green he demonstrates daily actionable steps on how to be earth friendly.

Issue 4 | February/March 2010

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