 EnviroCitizen.org has found that there is one avenue through which you can improve your home, your diet and your carbon footprint all at once-through food! By changing the way that you purchase, prepare, consume and dispose of food, you can increase your quality of life, improve your diet and substantially reduce your carbon footprint.
The first and most important step is to include your family in the process of handling foo food. EnviroCitizen.org suggests that you let your family help plan menus, shop and cook. You could even help them grow a garden from which you can harvest some food. By incorporating your family into the process, you are doing two primary things: you are improving your relationship with your family and you are helping them to understand all that goes into the food we eat. One of the things that sets humans apart from other species is the fact that humans routinely sit down together to share meals and do so intentionally to bond (as opposed to a family of gorillas eating next to each other because they're eating the same fruit from the same tree or a herd of gazelles that stay together for protection).
The next step is to change what food you purchase. In general, it's best to buy whole foods or the foods that are commonly found in the exterior walls of your grocery store. In general, the further to the middle the food is, the more processed it is. Processed foods are bad for a number of reasons. For starters, processed food takes a lot of energy to create and transport. Dozens of ingredients go into processed foods, which then go through an energy intensive process of transforming those ingredients into a food product. The final product is then shipped all throughout the country, which creates a lot of food miles that will increase your carbon footprint if you purchase these products. Processed food is also bad because it is more difficult to digest. The added preservatives and other chemicals that go into processed foods are not as easily digestible as whole foods such as fresh produce.
Next, prepare more wholesome, simple recipes. A great rule of thumb to follow is the idea that you should be able to, at the dinner table, identify all of the ingredients in a meal. Better food for your family means better food for your bodies and less of an impact on the environment.
Finally, grow as much of your own food as possible. By growing your own food and involving your family in the process, you can drastically reduce your carbon footprint. Even when the growing season is over, you can freeze a lot of fresh produce, which you can then enjoy all winter long!
The main idea EnviroCitizen.org would like to get across through all of this is that we should be conscious consumers. Understand what you are eating, where it came from and what it does to both your body and to the environment. The perfect diet, in the opinion of environmentalists and EnviroCitizen.org, would be comprised largely of local, organic produce (or homegrown, organic produce). Doing so would drastically reduce your carbon footprint, improve your diet and improve the overall relationship of your family if you do it together. So many benefits with only moderate effort!
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