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Old Sun, Jan-31-21, 09:03
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Calianna Calianna is online now
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If you don't mind my saying, that article was just all over the place.

Quote:
In an ideal world, those who follow a plant-based diet would shop at a local farmers’ market for seasonal bounty


The farmer's markets are still open in February, but pray tell, what kind of seasonal bounty do they really expect to find at a farmer's market in the dead of winter? I honestly think people in general have completely lost all connection with when food actually grows.

This was never so obvious to me as when a customer at the store where I worked was buying some corn on the cob in February, and was gushing about how excited she was to find corn on the cob in the stores already. She actually thought it was locally grown, despite the fact that it was not only freezing out, but there was still a foot of snow on the ground. She seemed rather shocked when I explained to her that it was not local - it was shipped in from someplace hundreds or thousands of miles south of here, where fresh corn was actually in season at that time of year.

If you look outdoors to see that the deciduous trees have lost their leaves, and there's ice on the pond, or snow on the ground, lettuce, tomatoes, and zucchini are NOT currently growing in your area, unless they are grown in an artificially heated greenhouse environment (which during the dead of winter will likely also require some artificial light, since short winter days do not provide enough sunlight for proper growth). Any other tender fresh veggies or fruits are also not being produced naturally during the winter - they're either shipped in from hundreds or thousands of miles away, or they're greenhouse grown.

If you see fresh produce in the market in the middle of the winter that is not a root vegetable, a winter squash, or a fruit that holds up well to extended storage (such as apples, and oranges), you can be certain it was not grown locally. I see asparagus in the stores year round now - but locally, it can only be produced in your area during a few weeks in the springtime. The rest of the year, asparagus (as well as all those other tender veggies and fruits you have in your grocery cart) were shipped in from regions of the world where it is currently summer - and the amount of fuel needed to transport those contributes to climate change, which is one of the reasons people eat a vegan diet to begin with.

But the typical city dweller doesn't realize this.

Quote:
and stock their pantry with nuts, seeds and pulses, supplemented with a flavour arsenal of nutritional yeast, miso, herbs and spices.


Quote:
I love cooking with tempeh, which can seem quite expensive, but you don’t need lots — a packet should be enough for three or four meals. Even though I eat tofu every now and then, I’m quite dubious about soya products because of the environmental impact of monoculture and forest clearance.


Oh the irony! Yes, tofu is a soy product - but so are miso and tempeh. If you want to avoid using soy because of mono-culture and forest clearance, then you'll avoid miso and tempeh, as well as tofu.

Quote:
“Farming understands it has to change, but it can’t suddenly change to growing bananas and pineapples.”


This goes back to general ignorance about what grows at what time of year, and in what part of the world. Bananas and pineapples are tropical fruits, which only grow in a tropical environment. Unless your farm is in the tropics, you will NEVER be able to change over to growing bananas and pineapples, not suddenly, and not over the course of time either.

Quote:
Chris Elliott’s guidelines to better food shopping:

● Buy local
● Buy fresh
● If processed, go for the least amount of processing, such as freezing. Keep processed foods to a minimum
● Be sensible about what you eat. Aim for a balanced diet made up of foods your granny would recognise. Include oily fish for fatty acids, milk and eggs for vitamin D, and vegetables for B vitamins. If you choose a pea-based burger that is missing micronutrients — why? What do you need it for?
● Don’t make the mistake of thinking eating is a religion


Buy local - good idea. Unless you live in a city, and especially large population areas such as NYC or LA, where it would be impossible to feed the entire local population on the available arable and pasture land. Any "local" food will still come from 100 or more miles away.

And of course if you can buy fresh, that's a good thing. But both fresh and local? That's unlikely, unless you go to a local farm that has a produce stand, and even then, only if you can see that particular item growing in the field. Even in this rural area, local farmers will often buy a truckload of something they don't even grow to sell at their farmstand.

The grocery store where I worked had these big signs up at the entrance saying that they sold local produce. This time of year it's pretty much an outright lie that any of the produce is locally grown, but even in the summertime, the "local" produce was often trucked in from 400 miles away. I don't know about you, but to me that is not "local" - that's a good 7 hour drive away, in a refrigerated truck.


Quote:
Finnish company Solar Foods has found a way to produce protein for use in packaged meals, plant-based meat substitutes and cultured meat using electricity and CO2 — literally creating food from air.

~snip~

“Its amino acid composition compares well with known protein sources such as soybean and beef, the company says. And it has the added advantage of binding CO2 , instead of causing it.”
Solar describes Solein as a complete protein with all the essential amino acids, she writes. “The company says it is light in taste and appearance — and it ‘vanishes into daily meals while simultaneously maintaining its rich nutritional value’.”


While this may help provide protein, the story of nutrition is not just about macro-nutrients. It may have all the essential amino acids, but it still doesn't address the matter of micro-nutrients that are really only available from animal based foods, the very nutrients that vegans absolutely must supplement.
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