Experts estimate that people around the world waste 1.3 billion tons of food each year. The costs to individuals, families, and the environment are astronomical. You can make a difference by making a personal commitment to minimizing food waste. At Mark’s Daily Apple, we’re joining Primal Kitchen in an effort to #MaketheMost of mealtime this National Food Waste Day. Scroll down to find tips and techniques for being more sustainable and reducing your environmental footprint by reducing food waste, optimizing your grocery budget, and contributing less to the landfill. For more information, head to PrimalKitchen.com and sign up to receive an exclusive e-book to fight food waste with tasty recipes, packaging hacks, and more tips! Store and Preserve Food Properly So It Doesn’t Go to Waste Food spoiling before you get a chance to eat it is a huge contributor to food waste. In additional to shopping smart (more on that below), you can nip this problem in the bud by storing food properly after you bring it home from the store. For those times when you buy a little too much or you’re lucky enough to have a bountiful garden harvest, learn how to preserve that food and enjoy it for months to come. Avoid spoilage: Vegetable Victory: How to Best Preserve Produce When Do Foods Really Go Bad? Freeze: How to Freeze Produce Fresh Versus Frozen Food: Which Is More Nutritious? Dehydrate: Dehydrating Food at Home: How to Get Started Easy Camping Meals You Can Prepare at Home How to Make Your Own Jerky How to Make Turkey Jerky (That’s Super Easy and Tastes Like Thanksgiving) Pickle and ferment: Sauerkraut Benefits (with an Easy Homemade Sauerkraut Recipe) Pickled Vegetables, Two Ways: Home Fermented and Quick Pickles What to Do with Food Scraps: Trash to Treasure Those food scraps aren’t trash! There’s still a lot you can do with them. Turn them into compost: How to Start Composting Make bone broth: Chicken Bone Broth Four Ways Beef Bone Broth Variations Instant Pot Chicken Bone Broth Recipe (with Stovetop Option) Get creative: The Many Uses of Junk Food Eat Nose to Tail We know, those bits and bobbles can be a little off-putting at first, but organ meats are some of the most nutritious foods on the planet! Eating the skin and gristly bits nets you a bunch of collagen to balance out the methionine in muscle meat. The bones of small, oily fish contain calcium and other minerals. And best of all, almost nothing goes to waste. This is huge at a time when we’re fighting against a tide of anti-meat sentiment and claims that meat eating is bad for the environment. The best thing we meat consumers can do is advocate for and practice responsible omnivory or carnivory. Get started with nose-to-tail eating: Guide to Organ Meats Why We Should All Be Eating Organ Meats How to Eat More Organ Meat Organ Meat Recipes 6 Sneaky Ways to Work Offal Into Your Diet Learn more about … Continue reading “Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste and Pitch in for the Planet”
Read MoreIf you listen to the experts, the authorities, the think tanks, eating meat destroys the environment. It “destroys your health” too, of course, but by far the biggest argument being pushed—and the one most regular people implicitly accept as “probably accurate”—is that meat consumption is detrimental to planetary health. I’m not going to cover the health part. That’s been done to death. If you’re reading this blog post, you probably reject that aspect of the argument. Hell, you might be chowing down on a steak at this very moment. This post is for the people who still worry about the effect of meat on the environment. It’s a noble concern, one that I share. So today, I’m going to explain how you can eat meat and still reduce your environmental impact. Stay on track no matter where you are. Instantly download your Primal and Keto Guide to Eating Out Eat local. This one is almost entirely self-explanatory. When meat travels across the world to get to your plate, or even halfway across the country, it’s burning through fuel and producing emissions that harm the environment. It has to travel from the farm to the packing plant, from the plant to the shipyard, from the shipyard to the sea, across the sea to the port, from the port to the distribution center, from the distribution center to the store, from the store to your home. If your meat is local, all those middle men and their emissions are, well, omitted. It goes from the farm to the local abattoir, and then onto the farmers market or local grocer. And sometimes, the farm has their own in-house slaughtering and packing setup, and you cut the middle men out even more. If enough people do this, the local market expands, and the effect multiplies. So do it! Eat grass-fed, sustainably-farmed animals. There’s an entire book about this: Robb Wolf and Diana Rodgers’ Sacred Cow. They also did a very relevant guest post on this stuff. The basic gist is that animals raised on pasture with rotational grazing that mimics the way herbivores travel and eat in nature can build up the soil, fertilize the land, and trigger greater plant growth and stronger, deeper root systems that further enrich the soil and its bacterial inhabitants. It’s almost like pasture needs herbivores just as much as herbivores need pasture. More than that, not all land is fungible. There’s a ton of land that’s inhospitable to crops but perfect for livestock. If you got rid of livestock, you’d be wasting that land; you couldn’t just plant some corn on it. It’s livestock or nothing. Where do your omegas come from? Get sustainably sourced, third-party tested Omega-3s Remember that there’s more to the environment than carbon emissions. There are many other aspects of the environment to observe and protect—and proper meat can help. When you get locally packed meat that’s wrapped in butcher paper ten miles from your house, there’s less plastic and less airborne pollutants gumming up … Continue reading “How to Eat Meat and Still Reduce Your Environmental Impact”
Read MoreToday we’re sharing a post by guest authors Robb Wolf, New York Times Best Selling Author and one of the early advocates of the paleo lifestyle, and Diana Rodgers, RD, Real Food Dietitian and Sustainability Advocate. Robb and Diana co-authored Sacred Cow, an eye-opening book about meat, health, and sustainability, out this month.
The ancestral health community generally accepts the right type of meat as a health food. In fact, eating animals is the number one guiding principle of the Primal lifestyle. Still, some groups advise against meat consumption.
Two of the main arguments that you should give up meat are:
It’s healthier to eat vegan
You reduce your impact on the planet if you’re vegan
If your primary meat source comes predominantly from a drive-thru, then yes, these arguments probably hold true. But there’s a world of difference between mass-produced meat from large agricultural operations, and pasture-raised meat from small-scale farms. The animals’ diet and living conditions have a profound effect on what the meat does for your body and for (or against) the planet.
Here are the main reasons why eating meat the right way can benefit your health, as well as the planet’s carbon load.
Read MoreIn nutrition, there are very few universal consensuses. Conventional wisdom says that fat makes you fat and whole grains are essential, and millions of people agree, but the ancestral health and keto communities (and reality) disagree. Primal and keto folks don’t worry much about saturated fat and limit polyunsaturated fat; conventional health advocates do the opposite. The opinion on meat intake varies wildly, with some people suggesting we eat nothing but red meat, others recommending “palm-sized” pieces of strictly white meat, and still others cautioning against any meat at all. Pick a food and you can find a sizable group that hates it and a sizable one that loves it. You can find researchers who spend their lives making the case against it and researchers who spend their lives making the case for it.
But not fish. Fish is about as close to a universal as any food. Barring the vegans and vegetarians (some of whom, however, are sneaking wild salmon when their followers aren’t watching), everyone appreciates and extols the virtues of eating seafood. Including me.
Read MoreFor today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m addressing four questions and comments from readers. First up, do I subscribe to the idea of superfoods? If so, what do I like? If no, what do I consider “super”? Next, we know that plants—house plants, garden plants, trees—can absorb pollution and release stress-lowering odors. Is there an optimal arrangement of flora to achieve these goals? After that, I address a reader comment about the dangers of eating raw liver, followed by an intrepid reader who found the reference for the sunbathing testicle study from last week.
Let’s go:
Read MoreNo, you yourself can’t save the world. You personally won’t make a dent in the climate, or the amount of plastic in the ocean, or the number of cute baby seals that are bludgeoned to death. But collectively, we can. The choices we make, the things we value, the food we eat, the way our food is raised, who we buy our food from, and how we conduct our day-to-day lives in attempted harmony with our Primal natures really does seem to mesh well with the environment. Multiply those small personal choices by millions of readers (and their dollars) and you get real change.
I’m not putting any extra pressure on you. These are things you’re already doing, by and large. These are the ways going Primal can actually help, not harm, the environment.
Read MoreFor today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions. The first one comes from Neda, who’s experiencing some issues that may be related to her fasting schedule. How should she modify her fasting? Or should she eliminate it altogether? The second question concerns a common issue: neck pain during pullups. Why does it happen and how can we avoid it? And finally, what’s the deal with red palm oil? I give my take on the controversial oil, drawing on randomized controlled trials and personal feelings about orangutans to arrive at my conclusion.
Let’s go:
Read MoreFor today’s edition of Dear Mark, we’ve got a three-parter. First, I cover the potentially estrogenic effects of milk thistle extract and discuss whether or not it’s a problem for your endocrine health that outweighs the benefits to liver health. Next, I discuss the reasons why someone might have a low libido eating a paleo style diet, and give a few potential solutions to explore. And finally, Carrie helps a reader figure out some ways to mitigate or avoid the damage wrought by air pollution. It’s everywhere these days, but that doesn’t mean we have to sit there and accept our fate.
Let’s go:
Read MoreIt’s Monday, which means it’s time for another edition of Dear Mark. This week, I’m covering three topics. First up is iodized salt and its place in the Primal eating plan. It’s processed, it’s conventional, and plenty of alternative health purveyors warn against eating it, but how bad is it? Is there actually a place for it in a Primal lifestyle? After that, I discuss the myriad ways the weather can affect our health and physiology, including lowering body temperature, impairing immune function, increasing blood pressure, and triggering joint pain. Finally, I explore whether or not mercury fillings in our teeth are a health hazard, weighing the evidence from both sides of the argument. I also discuss what to do if you want to have them removed.
Let’s get to it!
Read MoreAt first glance, these may seem inconsequential to the casual reader. Biodiversity? That sounds like some fancy newspeak conjured up by Greenpeace! Soil health? How can soil be healthy? It’s just a collection of inanimate bits of dirt and clay and sand! Bee health? What do I care about a lousy bee? All those things have ever done is sting me, vomit up fructose, and make annoying buzzing noises. Carbon sequestration? Carbon dioxide is a mythological compound! It doesn’t even exist. Worker health? I dunno about you, but it looks like they’re getting a great workout to me, and what’s healthier than that?
Although I’m exaggerating these reactions, of course, the fact is that a lot of the potential benefits of organic farming are lost on consumers because they fail to immediately impact your health in the here and the now. You might be vaguely aware that biodiversity, the health of the soil, the role of bees, the ability of soil to sequester carbon, and the health effects of conventional farming on farm workers are “important” to consider, but are they important enough to nudge you toward consuming organic?
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