Eating Green – Choose Foods That Are Good for You and the Earth – Podcast

Laura Stec talks to us about a way of eating that is just as good for us as it is for the earth.



Host: Gloria Tsang, RD

Guest: Chef Laura Stec



Did your New Year's Resolutions include switching to an environmentally-friendly way of eating that can be sustained long-term? Welcome to the Nutrition Tidbits podcast. Chef Laura Stec, co-author of the book Cool Cuisine, talks to us about a way of eating that is just as good for us as it is for the earth.







 

Transcript:

Gloria Tsang, RD: Did your New Year's Resolutions include switching to an environmentally-friendly way of eating that can be sustained long-term? Welcome to the Nutrition Tidbits podcast. This is Gloria Tsang, editor-in-chief for HealthCastle.com. Joining me today is Chef Laura Stec, author of the book Cool Cuisine. She is here today to talk to us about a way of eating that is just as good for us as it is for the earth. Laura, thanks for joining me.



Laura Stec: Thank you.



Gloria Tsang, RD: You refer to fruits and vegetables grown in healthier soil as being "high vibe". What exactly is high vibe?



Laura Stec: High vibe is exactly the food we want to eat, which is foods grown in healthy soils - with hands of loving grace from farmers that we may even know. Our machine cuisine or what term the global warming diet in the book, is based in efficiency and not flavor. When we start looking at the solutions to global warming, we realized that some of the solutions can be the best thing that can happen to the culinary world in a long time because they start with the basic important idea of treating and caring for the soil. We should look at the soil not as some kind of irrelevant thing that doesn't really matter, but we should look at as a fine Bordelaise sauce. This is the analogy we used in the book. Thinks like putting in compost, putting in seasonings and flavors just like we would as cooks, pulling things out of our spice cabinets. So seasoning our soil with basically our leftover food and good quality manures that can then give us the minerals, seasonings and flavors that we need to produce better tasting product and we call that high vibe food.



Gloria Tsang, RD: For the average person, how do we know that a specific fruit or vegetable is grown in healthier soil when we go to a grocery store or a farmer's market?



Laura Stec: Well you can't actually but there is a label called the USDA organic in the United States which means they are grown organically. That could be one start but there are different levels that farmers can achieve that certification. The best thing to do in any state in the US is to search out your local farmers. That starts at the farmer's market. Get to know them, find out where their farm is. If you have the opportunity, visit them no matter what month they may be growing (fruits and vegetables) - attend events at their farm if they are open to the public and get to who is growing your food. That way, you can be assured of one of the most important things that people require from our food system, which is food safety. The closer you are to the source of your food, the more safe your food will be, as well as delicious and healthful.



Gloria Tsang, RD: You mentioned energy efficiency. One of the things that you talked about in your book with regards to seafood choices is to eat "low". What do you mean by eating low?



Laura Stec: Eating low would be fish that are low on the food chain. That would be fish that don't eat other fish or are vegetarians such as tilapia, which is actually a vegetarian fish. Or fish that are eaten by other fish, such as herring and anchovies. Other things that are low in the food chain in the sea are mussels and clams. When we do that (choose seafood low in the food chain), we can have the sea be more efficient at being able to produce food.