At Chef V, we’re proud to make a purely organic juice cleanse. Our customers are also pretty crazy about it. We’ve noticed that there’s often an intersection between the desire to eat organically and a desire to be sustainable. This makes perfect sense upfront. The processes by which you grow food organically often overlap with how you grow food sustainably. But is that the whole picture? Are there other ways to eat sustainably beyond hunting down organic fare? We’ll discuss it all in this blog.
What is Sustainability?
You’ve probably heard the word sustainability tossed around a lot in the sense of being “good for the environment”. Sustainability is a little bit more specific than that. Sustainability in this case refers to farming practices that ensure that the land can be used continuously for generations to come. Essentially it means getting food in a way that doesn’t harm the ability of future generations to get their food. This can involve the passive selection of land and farming practices. It could also mean actively avoiding things that poison the environment, such as toxic pesticides.
How Do I Eat Sustainably?
When it comes to eating sustainably, there’s no one magical way to affect your impact on the planet. Just picking organic juice cleanses doesn’t mean you’re a fully sustainable person. Indeed, it’s hard to live in the modern world and be fully sustainable. Even if you only ate food you grew yourself, you’d still impact the planet through your regular energy consumption.
It’s better to think of eating sustainably as a menu of options you can take to lower your environmental impact. Here are some ways to get started!
Embrace Regenerative Agriculture
Regenerative Agriculture is a massive movement in modern farming. It would take an enormous essay to explain all the intricacies. To understand regenerative agriculture, we’re going to have to get dirty. That’s right – soil. When it comes to farming, the soil is one of the most critical factors in what you can grow, how fast, and how healthy that plant will be. Good healthy soil is going to be full of tons of microorganisms. Many farming practices tend to kill off these microorganisms to maximize a single harvest through processes like deep tillage and monocultures (only growing a single crop in an area). This essentially leads to less fertile soil, which is soil that is less suitable for growth over time. Attempting to move back to more traditional farming practices can help promote overall soil fertility.
You’ll want to buy from producers who only use regenerative farming practices if possible. Obviously, that can sometimes be difficult to figure out. When feasible, try to go for organic products.
Buy Organic
Trying to find out exactly how an individual farm operates is tricky. However, certified organic labels are pretty standard on many modern products. They are a great way to help you identify products grown more sustainably. Generally, organic means that a product is made without harmful artificial accessories, such as toxic pesticides or fertilizers. This means that there is a significant overlap between organic products and ones grown with regenerative agriculture.
(Here’s a great bonus for you – all the veggies in our organic juice cleanses are not only totally organic but guaranteed to be grown with regenerative agriculture. That means that Chef V has a 21 day cleanse that you can order with complete confidence as far as sustainability goes!)
Adopt a Sustainable Diet
Where you get your food is the most critical choice in being sustainable. But you can also gear yourself towards sustainable eating in the choices that you make in your diet. Essentially, different foods are going to have a different environmental impact. Also, suppose you lean too heavily on one kind of food. In that case, you’ll be contributing to the creation of mono farming – bad for the soil, remember?
Most experts recommend a balanced diet that is heavy on fruits and vegetables. Generally, plant products require less from our planet than poultry and fish, which themselves require less than red meats. Including more fruits and veggies in your diet can help be more sustainable – but don’t consider this a cureall. Try to do your research on standard farming practices for specific products. For example, many people want to move to plant-based milk to be more sustainable – but almonds specifically take up a massive amount of water to grow.
Avoid Food Waste
When it comes to being more sustainable, your head may be spinning at all the research you need to do. Want an easy way to be sustainable? Avoid food waste. Whether you eat it or not, wasted food is food that needed energy and soil to create, but for no benefit.
Making sure to carefully consider and manage your portion choices isn’t just a great way to be more sustainable. It can also help with your weight loss goals. Other ways to avoid weight loss are pretty simple. Try to repurpose leftovers whenever possible. Do your best to meal plan to prevent food from going bad. All minor changes, but all easy ways to be a more sustainable human being.
Eat Local
When we think about sustainability, we often laser focus on farming practices. And that makes sense, of course. You can’t be sustainable without sustainable farming. But what about the rest of the agricultural process? Food doesn’t magically teleport from the farm to your plate. It needs to be packaged, processed in at least some way, and then delivered to you.
Moving food around can cause a lot of energy waste and pollution, especially if it’s traveling long distances. Your 21 day detox can be filled with totally organic products, but is it sustainable if it needs to be frozen and then transported across the country?
Thankfully, Chef V’s organic juice cleanse is made fresh and delivered quickly to you, with distribution centers depending on which part of the country you’re in. This makes our organic juice cleanses fresher and more nutritious, but it also cuts down on your environmental impact. Since you’ll be mostly cutting back on solid foods, your organic juice cleanse isn’t just great for you; it’s great for the planet too!