Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

reactions, toxins, and digestive problems that can develop make me quite leery of things that are genetically modified. I avoid them at all costs.

Opt for Foods that Are Produced Locally

I also make every effort to support local farmers. After growing your own food, buying food grown locally is the next best choice. If you live in a more rural area, you know that local farmers often sell fresh produce from stands on their property.

Since I’m in a more urban area, I visit my local farmers’ market just about every weekend. There’s probably one near you, too.

Farmers’ markets gather local vendors with a variety of products in one place at a regular time, such as every Saturday from 8 A.M. to noon. You can pick up all the fruits and vegetables that you can’t grow in your own garden, as well as things like organic meat and eggs, nuts and dried fruits, and freshly baked bread. Some markets also offer things like beeswax candles, organic yarn, and beauty products. Farmers’ markets are also a great place to get ideas of what to plant yourself, since these fruits and vegetables are grown locally—which means there’s a good chance these plants would thrive in your garden.

By purchasing from a local vendor,

• you’re helping reduce the energy used to truck food from faraway places to your local grocery store, as well as the need for packing materials

• you’re getting food that’s much fresher—often picked the same day (In contrast, produce in the grocery store may have spent one or even two weeks in transit.)

• you’re getting food that was grown for its taste, not for its ability to survive being machine-harvested and shipped hundreds, if not thousands, of miles

• you’re often helping support smaller farm operations, including local mom-and-pop farms

• you’re keeping your money within your local economy, which is good for your community

For those times when I can’t grow my own food or buy food that was grown locally, I make every effort to buy fair-trade food. Fair-trade farmers not only receive a living wage for their labors, but are also encouraged to engage in sustainable farming practices.

You can find all sorts of imported food that is labeled “fair trade,” including the following:

• coffee

• tea

• chocolate

• cashews

• olive oil

• rice

• sugar

• hearts of palm

• salmon

• honey

• salsa

• jam

• syrup

Why I’m a Vegetarian

If I seem to be more interested in fruits and vegetables than the average American male, there’s a good reason for that. I became a vegetarian for the first time in 1970.

I did it for a number of reasons. I had seen some photographs and films about conditions in a slaughterhouse, and it just seemed like a really bad thing to be subsidizing that culture. It wasn’t like the old days, when Farmer Jim would raise a cow on the side of a hill, then, at the end of its bucolic life of grazing, being nestled, having calves under a tree, he would slaughter it. Perhaps the farmer and his family would say a prayer, as the Native Americans do, for the life of the cow. It isn’t like that anymore. Cows are con-fined in really horrible conditions, the worst kind of conditions, for their whole lives, and the way they are dealt with is quite unsavory.

So I became a vegetarian for the cruelty issues involved with cattle raising and chicken farms and hog farms and all that—and I also did it for my health. I’d heard it was better to incorporate more plant food into your diet, and that movement grew in popularity in 1970, so I decided to try it. Some people take to it, some don’t, but I responded really well to eliminating meat from my diet. I haven’t had red meat since 1970, and I feel really good.

Of course, you don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat more fruits and vegetables. Filling up on greens rather than meat actually helps the environment.

There are six billion of us on this planet. The amount of arable land has essentially remained static over the years, but the population has risen exponentially, so the amount of arable land per person has actually dropped. Eating lower on the food chain helps save water and energy, and it also requires less land for farming. Just as an efficiency expert, removing any com-passionate issues from the discussion, I can say that being a vegetarian makes a lot of sense.

The funny thing is, many people use vegetables to make their meat more palatable. I’ve been told by meat eaters, “I don’t know how you can eat those vegetables. I eat meat, and it’s delicious and it’s wonderful.”

“Really? You just have a raw steak?”

“No, I put on some ketchup or salsa.” And they have their tacos with lettuce and tomatoes and olives and onions. They cook their roasts with onions and carrots and celery to add their flavors.

I make lots of easy, delicious dishes with fresh vegetables and organic seasonings.

So I have to ask, “Do you want that meat to taste more like vegetables?” Okay, yeah. As for me, I’ll just have my vegetables taste like vegetables, thank you.

Now, some vegetarians don’t want to have things that taste like meat. They want broccoli. They don’t want anything to taste like pork or veal or anything. That’s why they’re vegetarians.

But if you like the taste of meat, you can eat vegetarian foods that are quite healthy. They’re vegetables spiced with other vegetables, and they taste just fine. And there are different soy products that mimic both the taste and texture of various meat products, such as bacon or ham.

In the early ’90s, I discovered I was lactose intolerant, so I took my vegetarian diet a step further and became a vegan. No dairy, no chicken, no eggs, no fish.

I feel a lot better since I’ve stopped eating dairy, both because I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the conditions for the animals at many dairy farms