It‘s been said that we’re the only species on earth that doesn’t know what to eat. When it comes to eating to save the planet, we hear so much conflicting advice. It can be hard to know what to do. So what is a sustainable diet, and can we do?
This is a preview of the final chapter ‘What Can We Do?’ from my book, out now. See Eat Like Your Ancestors (From the Ground Beneath Your Feet): A Sustainable Food Journey Around the English West Midlands.
How can I live better? That’s what many people are asking. When it comes to eating better food (better for us and the planet), we want to know what we can do, not just what governments and international agencies can do.
I don’t believe there’s one ‘fix’, but we needn’t be rudderless and confused. This book has focused on one good starting place. And that’s ‘place’, for there’s power in place. Think #PlaceBasedDiet or #PlaceBasedFood, regardless of what you hear on social media. We’re so used to hearing the words ‘plant-based diet’ – a concept that seems to have turned into our global one-fix solution for protecting us from global warming and for saving animals.
There’s no one fix that applies to everyone, everywhere. If you start with the ground beneath your feet, however, you train your mind on how food is ultimately connected to landscape, soil, water and climate. You cease to view food as a single tick-box in a list of to-do’s if you want to be a more sustainable, conscious or ethical consumer.
1. Start With Place
The word place forces you to think beyond a single homogenous fix; less like a consumer in the middle of a supermarket, and more like a producer matching crops and animals to good soils, to poor rocky ground, wet, low-lying plains and local climate. You might think like a forager, or even hunter. If you’re disconnected, then it entices you to reconnect and enter a new world.
For other issues, such as reducing plastic pollution, the message that’s been helping the most is to take one step at a time, or start from one place. You can take the same approach when it comes to sustainable food.
If you eat like your ancestors, you’d eat more from the ground beneath your feet. Or, as I’ve mentioned in the introduction, from the water lapping up against your bankside and shores.
Even if your recent ancestors came from somewhere very different to where you live now, you can always adapt the traditions of your ancestors to the place you live now. After all, throughout human history whole populations have moved and have done this.
Nevertheless, I believe that starting here will inspire and inform you. Even bring a breath of fresh air into the issue, because you’ll need to get out into the fresh air.
You don’t need to join a diet tribe to do this, although there is the term locavore. Someone, somewhere, will be tell you that a particular way of eating is THE way to eat. If I appear to be doing the same, it’s not one way of eating regardless of where you are in the world.
Read more about why to ditch the diet silo. Find a world outside the supermarket (although that probably doesn’t mean you’ll never go in one again), and reconnect with food. Ask more questions about where your food comes from, and bump up your knowledge about food. If you live somewhere where the local food culture has broadly stayed the same for thousands of years, it’ll be because that’s the most sustainable way to produce food.
Find out more about ancient food, that builds upon traditional knowledge, and discover your Imaginary Homestead.
Featured image (above) by Kevin Jarrett on unsplash.com.
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I truly love this post and I am so grateful that someone {You!} is asking more important questions surrounding food production. My husband and I have long asked questions about our ancestral diets (due to my Celiac disease, and both our A1 casein intolerance) and have come to the conclusion that local is best. We are homesteading in Romania and have had an amazingly abundant year – 250 jars of preserves, jams and pickles, the cellar is stocked with apples, pears, winter squashes and potatoes, we’ve even “harvested” 270 liters of organic apple juice! Besides this, we forage for plants that most people do not eat, thereby gaining nutritional benefits as well. Our imaginary homestead is becoming very real, indeed.
Thanks so much for your comment. Yes, I really do think we need ask these important questions about food and diet. It sounds like you’ve had an amazing year on your homestead, and through doing that you have an understanding about food – what it takes to produce it or collect it.
I see you are running courses about homesteading what you are in Romania, and providing advice on sustainable living. We need to see more of that! Cheryl is at https://forestcreekmeadows.com folks… So, it’s a real homestead where you have to work with the landscape to produce quality food.