"Greening your diet is not about sacrificing an entire food group, or strictly eating vegetables, or giving up the foods you love."
A website featuring healthy diet lists 5 ways to get you a green diet Monday. It asks people to return to fresh and flavorful foods, consider the planet when making food choices and make eco-friendly options that are typically the tastiest ones.
Here are five ways to green your diet:
Buy organic foods when you can
Choosing organics keeps you from pesticide pollution. You are advised to buy the organic version of these five fruits and vegetables, which have been shown to retain the highest level of pesticides: peaches, sweet bell peppers, apples, celery, and strawberries.
Eat a local meal
Try to eat a local meal to avoid pollution and waste from transportation. The definition of local varies depending on where you live — for some it might be hundreds of km radius, for others it could be thousands of km radius. The goods will be in season and fresh.
Go brown
We're talking grains. Why cut a whole food group out of your diet? The grain group includes wheat, rice, oats, cornmeal and barley. They're naturally low in fat and high in vitamins.
Also, there are two types of grains: whole (think whole wheat bread, oatmeal and brown rice) and refined (think white bread, corn flakes and macaroni).
Pour a glass of organic wine
In moderation, wine has some heart-healthy benefits. Organic wine is made from grapes grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Paper or plastic? How about neither
Plastic bags are made from petroleum and only about one percent of the estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion used worldwide are recycled each year. Start bringing your own.
(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2008)