Eat Well To Be Well

WHAT TO KNOW
Most food travels over 1,200 miles before it gets to your plate, losing nutritional value along the way, as well as depleting natural resources and adding to global warming in the transportation process. The food we choose for ourselves and our family impacts everyone's health and wellness, and though ideally we would all be growing our own veggies, milking the cows, and eating every home cooked meal, together around the family table, that's just not a reality for most of us in today's world. But there is a lot you can do!

By choosing organic, locally grown, and seasonal produce, meats, dairy, and legumes whenever possible you protect your family from exposure to toxic pesticides and help keep our waterways and food chains healthy and clean for generations to come.

WHAT TO DO

1. Utilize EWG's Shopper's Guide To Pesticides to learn how you can make the best choices for your budget and avoid giving your family chemically-sprayed and grown food. For the produce with the most pesticides, you definitely want to buy organically grown, and then go conventional on the least heavily sprayed items.
2. Grocery shop at your Farmer's Market whenever possible, and get to know your local farmers. Many small farms can't afford to be certified organic, but they know that chemicals aren't good for anyone and choose not to use chemical or petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides. Their products are good, clean, and healthy. Locally grown also has nutrients that are more beneficial to your body than are foods grown thousands of miles away.
3. Read In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
4. Recipe ideas: Family Eats, Organic To Be, Organic Authority

GET MORE INVOLVED

• Join the Slow Food Movement, and rediscover a sense of pleasure and community in your meals
• Visit Local Harvest, to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
• Teach children about how food is grown through programs like Edible School Yards and Project Lunch.
• Hold an EcoMom Party and screen the Sierra Club video, The True Cost of Food