After a month on the Livewell diet, I thought I should firstly thank the great Duncan Williamson at WWF-UK for such a ground breaking paper, the first person in the UK to really quantify a healthy diet for us & our planet.
Secondly set some guidelines on what I've learnt on carbon footprinting and nutritional analysing everything for a whole mount. So to be a Brit, eat healthy & within our resources this is what my revised rules are
1. Eat simple, eat less but go for quality, think balance eat no more than you need & build exercise into your diet
- a typical Brit is eating 3500 calories, a 46 year old man needs 2300 - that's as wasteful as binning it
- meals rich in fruit, vegetables, pulses, wholegrains and nuts are great
- good ingredients taste better & are normally better for everyone
- accept food is going to get more expensive & good food will cost more
- 3 meals a day, always a good breakfast, a main meal (best midday) & a light meal
- rarely have I seen a good place to buy fuel for my body that mainly sell it for my car
- Processed food is often unhealthy, tasteless, high in fat &/or salt
2. Choose food for how it's grown: think about - animal welfare (meat & dairy), wildlife & biodiversity, water, embedded oil/carbon, buy local and eat the seasons when you can
- a typical Brit adult may be eating 6.5-8.5kgs of embedded greenhouse gasses (GHG/carbon)
- by 2020 we have to get that down to less than 5kgs, and by 2027 4kgs of carbon to meet our global obligations
- local food may not always be lower in impacts, but it's better for the economy & our culture for sure
- seasonal food is likely to be lower in its impacts, cheaper & tastier, so why not?
- you cannot eat packaging, sometimes it helps safe waste & is good, sometimes it just costs more
3. Eat Fair
- by eating in excess we will be taking food from others who are not as well off as we are
- the poorest farmers in the world are working hard to feed us, let's pay them for it and also not eat their share
- don't waste your food we throw away between 20-40% of everything we buy, & buy too much
4. Eat more plants, go beyond 5 a day for fruit & vegetables, think 6-12 portions a day
- a portion is around 80g or a good handful
- we include up to 2 portions of potatoes
- count fruit as no more than 3 or 4 if you hit 12, juice a max of 2 if of differing types
- limit high impact fruit & vegetables: airfreighted (out of season herbs, greens & tropical) unless fair-trade, tomatoes/peppers/chillies/cucumbers out of season
5. Eat less than the norm for meat, cheese and dairy
- for meat, hard cheese and butter no more than 2 full portions per day: that's 104g per day (count a 52g portion of soft cheese or similar as half/26g)
- presently we eat around 216g of meat per day and a good chunk of cheese and a little butter
- pay for the best, organic, LEAF & Red Tractor, by growing food to higher standards we will hopefully help the environment, have less to pay cleaning up the pollution & have better tasting food
- artisan/expensive usually means more for the farmer, you pay for what you get
- rumour has it we mostly enjoy the first few mouthfuls of meat & cheese
6. Eat fish in moderation and always from sustainable sources
- 2 portions a week, oily fish is good (like sardine, herring, anchovy, salmon, trout & mackerel)
- a portion is a 50-100g fillet, or 100-200g whole
- look for sustainable fish like MSC certified or local day boat caught
7. Drinks: minimise all but the mains tap water
- bottled drinks & definitely water is a treat, tap is better for the pocket & planet
- alcohol in moderation for yours & the planets health
- tea & coffee should be fairly traded with thought for the environment, they are high impact
8. Think about how it's cooked & presented
- oil and fats in moderation, animal fats are OK to cook with in moderation
- we eat too much salt around 8-9g per day, we need 6, minimise processed foods and don't add it unless you have too
- the associated electric & gas used in preparing & eating can more than double it's impacts
- food should look good, it makes it more enjoyable
- smaller plates help to keep intake down
9. Eat feasts with friends on high days & holidays - it's fun & what life should be about
- don't not eat out or party, but compensate before & after
10. Learn about food, it's important: think the nutrition, health, the planet & taste & then ask would Great Grandma have known this as food?
- talk to the person who selling you the food, they should know more than you
- is meat grown on soya from reclaimed rainforest land local or sustainable?
- Your ancestors only ate real food, we've evolve to eat a good range of this over many 1000's of year
