Food Choices

When making food choices I first and foremost think about nutrition. I try to make balanced food choices, as a result I’m cognizant of how much of each food group I’ve consumed in one day. It is important to me to eat lots of vegetables and foods while at school. In addition to food group classification, I’m a stickler for reading ingredient labels. Many products claim to be healthy for you, but really they’re not. As a student, it’s hard to afford organic foods, so I don’t usually take environmental concerns into account. However, sometimes when shopping at Whole Foods I can find great deals on environmentally friendly foods. At home my family only eats organic free range meats, my parents are definitely have the environment in mind when purchasing food for the family. We’ve found that the environmentally friendly foods are also more times than not more healthy for you.
The food item that I consumed in the past few days that has had the most environmental impact would mostly likely be kielbasa. Made from processed turkey meat, the production of kielbasa releases a large amount of nitrogen into the air, never mind the fact that the turkeys are probably kept in small pens. The turkeys are probably also pumped with antibiotics and fed a wheat/corn diet while standing in their own feces. Plus the energy that goes into feeding the turkeys is probably greater than the energy that the turkey provides me after its consumption.

Brittany