Eat Clean

By Tosca Reno

The foods we eat every day have an enormous impact, not only on our health, but also on the world in which we live. By reviewing your diet and making Clean-Eating choices, cutting unhealthy fats, sodium, refined foods, sugar and chemicals from your diet, you also lessen the negative impact on the environment. By making more informed food choices, you do your part to improve the health of this planet.

Purchase food from local growers, particularly when foods are in season. By reaching for a berry grown in local soil rather than one grown 3,000 miles away, you lessen your carbon footprint and you also receive the most nutrition.

Have you noticed how little packaging there is with produce and whole foods? By eating more whole foods and rejecting processed foods, you are at the same time eliminating excess packaging, which helps to keep garbage out of landfills. Staying away from fast-food and take-out establishments also helps reduce the amount of garbage you produce.

It is a wonderful feeling to Eat Clean, Eat Green and make a positive contribution to the environment. If enough of us vote with our dollars to steer clear of irresponsibly produced foods, the effect will get the attention of food companies and hopefully the government. Do your bit. Eat Clean. Eat Green.

Excerpted from The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids, with permission from Robert Kennedy Publishing, ©2008.