By kim ( May 7, 2009 at 9:29 pm) · Filed under Uncategorized, economics, environmental issues, fair trade, food, north american way of life
My local healthfood store has a sign up reminding patrons that it’s Fair Trade Month. More specifically, this Saturday, May 9, is World Fair Trade Day.
So I ask my readers - do you pay attention to fair trade labels?
Which products do you buy fair trade? Why?
For us, I buy bananas, cocoa/chocolate, and sugar exclusively fair trade because they’re all cash crops that ensure that developing countries stay just that - developing. Each of these products use up the resources of the country to provide for our western way of life while those resources could easily be used to provide nutritious food for the inhabitants. Sadly, our trade system has exploited developing countries to the point that they rely basically on the cash derived from selling all their resources to developed countries and have to import most of their food. If I drank coffee, that would be another one on my list.
(p.s. Does anyone else think the words ‘fair’ and ‘trade’ look funny when you’ve read them that many times?)
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By kim ( May 7, 2009 at 1:07 am) · Filed under Uncategorized, baby products, babywearing, older posts
… that in this post, I said that I was planning on using a baby carrier for the first few weeks.
Here we are - Gwen’s almost 11 months old and I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had her in the stroller. I love wearing my baby!
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By kim ( May 7, 2009 at 12:30 am) · Filed under Uncategorized, challenge, environmental issues, food, meat, protein, vegetarian
Crystle lent me the book Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. What an eye-opening book for sure! It discusses how many of our food resources are wasted in feed for our animals - especially beef.
After reading it, I’ve decided to challenge myself to make meat dishes only twice per week for the summer. This is a HUGE switch for us, as we currently eat a vegetarian meal maybe once or twice per week.
Really though, when it takes 2500 gallons of water to make just one pound of beef, and 7 pounds of grain (Lappe), does it make sense to comsume beef many times per week? Chicken is slightly less of an energy consumer, but still, compared to grain and vegetable sources of protein, it just doesn’t make sense (from the perspective of the planet anyways) to rely on animal sources of protein when plant sources are much more readily available and abundant.
Wish me luck on my new adventure!
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