We all start out the school year with lofty goals for our kids’ packed lunches (not to mention our own!) but it’s been a few weeks, and we’ve all hit a rut. But before you fall back on packaged snacks, give these whole foods packed lunch ideas a whirl. They’re fast, they’re easy, and best of all, you can pack the same thing for everyone in the family.

1. The Classic: Sandwich, Veggie and Dip, and Fruit

This lunch idea falls back on the old classic you grew up with, with a few modern twists. Start with a sandwich: swap out that white sandwich loaf mom used with a healthier organic bread. You can either make your own (this vegan spelt bread is to die for) or choose your favorite store-bought or bakery bread.

Sandwich the slices around a simple filling made of healthy, whole food ingredients. Here are just a few of our favorite combos:

• Organic roast turkey with mustard
• Hummus and alfalfa sprouts
• Organic beets and goat cheese
• Organic cashew butter and raw honey

Next, throw in a baggie of carrot sticks, a fresh organic apple, and a little container of hummus, nut butter, or tahini, and you’re ready to go.

2. Rice or Grain Salad

Rice or grain salads are a great way to use up leftovers from the night before. When you’re making dinner, make a habit of cooking up a pot of rice, quinoa, or spelt, and toss it with a bit of oil, butter, or vinaigrette to keep it from sticking. Then add some mix-ins, and lunch is ready.

Here are just a few of our favorite combos:

• Quartered cherry tomatoes and basil
• Cooked black beans, chopped scallions, and salsa
• Canned sustainable tuna and sliced olives
• Goat cheese and leftover roasted squash

3. Fajitas

While a lot of Mexican options like nachos, tacos, or burritos can get soggy by the time you get them to school or to work, fajitas work a charm because you keep the tortillas separate until you’re ready to eat. Try using bento boxes like GoodByn to separate the tortillas, guac, salsa, and fillings (roasted veggies or sliced grilled meats are great options).

4. Smorrebrod

For a super special sandwich, why not try a Scandinavian smorrebrod? The grainy rye bread is rich in fiber and super filling, and it makes a great base for a variety of ingredients (here are just a few of our favorite combos).

Some toppings may make the bread soggy, so consider packing the topping and the bread separately so that you can assemble when you’re ready to eat.

5. Lettuce Wraps

Leftover ginger chicken or barbecued tofu are the perfect fillings for lettuce wraps. Just choose a lettuce that will hold together well like butter lettuce or bibb – or even a heartier green like Swiss chard or kale. Add a small container of your favorite dipping sauce like teriyaki, sriracha, or coconut aminos to make this lunch even more special.

6. Spanish Tortilla

A well-made Spanish tortilla holds together even better than an omelet and is even better cold than hot. While a traditional tortilla features just potatoes and a bit of onion as a filling, you can also add other low-moisture ingredients like bell peppers, chiles, or peas to add color and nutrients.

Make the tortilla the night before, and once it’s cool, cut it into wedges. Wrap the wedges in a sustainable material like bee’s wrap, and let everyone grab their piece out of the fridge before heading to school or work.

7. Leftovers

With a little bit of planning, you can ensure that all the effort you’re putting into dinner serves you twice. Recipes like stir fries, Buddha bowls, or heartier soups can easily be doubled or tripled to make enough to pack up for the next day with no extra work or effort at all. Just be conscious of whether your kids have access to a microwave when picking your recipes: you want it to be something that’s just as delicious cold as it was hot.

Do you have any other tips and tricks for making a healthy packed lunch quickly? Share them with us via Facebook or Twitter.

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The post 7 Ways to Make a Whole Foods Packed Lunch in Under 20 Minutes appeared first on EcoSalon.

Is the Nordic Diet just the new “it” thing or is it actually a sustainable approach to food?

If it’s not one diet, it’s another, because let’s face it: we want the magic trick that will keep is fit and slim.

The truth is, there is no magic trick, the best diet isn’t a diet at all, but a healthy lifestyle built around eating real food. But this doesn’t stop us from seeking out things that can guide our eating habits. Which is maybe why things like the Mediterranean Diet have proved so succesful, both for people looking to eat better, and for authors and health gurus looking to make a buck. Of course a diet full of fresh produce is good for us. But don’t forget that it should also include physical exercise, and just because you started throwing back shots of olive oil doesn’t mean you can enjoy a fast food meal every Friday.

But forget the Mediterranean Diet, there’s a new health plan in town. The latest diet to hit the scene is the Nordic diet. Yes, we’re talking Viking food, or at least, a Viking approach to eating.

As a food trend New Nordic has been consuming the media for quite some time now. Whether you’re into Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian or Danish foraged food, there’s a chef and restaurant for you. In the cutting edge food world, people like Rene Redzepi and Magnus Nilsson have become household names. But lately, this New Nordic trend has taken a different spin, away from the the culinary elite and towards the average eater. Because it has taken the form of a trendy diet. When Vogue is writing about it, you know it’s a “thing.”

In the last few months, eating like a Viking has been called The Best New Diet For Weight Loss, The New “It” Diet and The Next Big Trend in Weight Loss. Which begs the question: what exactly is the Nordic diet?

Officially the New Nordic Diet came to fruition in 2004, when René Redzepi and Claus Meyer brought together a symposium of regional chefs to talk about the ever increasing consumption of processed foods and all those things we know we shouldn’t be eating. They came up with a “Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen,” which was then adopted by the Nordic Council of Ministers as its food policy in 2005.

There are 10 basic principles to the New Nordic Diet:

1. More fruit and vegetables every day (lots more: berries, cabbages, root vegetables, legumes, potatoes and herbs)
2. More whole grain, especially oats, rye and barley
3. More food from the seas and lakes
4. Higher-quality meat, but less of it
5. More food from wild landscapes
6. Organic produce whenever possible
7. Avoid food additives
8. More meals based on seasonal produce
9. More home-cooked food
10. Less waste

What this list isn’t something that’s specific to Scandinavia; these principles can be used anywhere, whether you’re in North America or Australia. It’s less of a Nordic Diet and more of a Smart and Sustainable General Approach to Good. A no-diet diet plan so to say.

But of course, the media is happy to latch onto anything that is the next “it” diet. Of course, there are some essential things to keep in mind. No matter what “diet” you choose to be on, there are still things to think about like portion control and exercise; just because you decided to from here on out only eat rye bread and foraged berries doesn’t mean you’re going to drop pounds instantaneously.

The basis for the New Nordic Diet was also to get people thinking about ingredients and foods that came from closer to home. In Scandinavia that might mean certain grains and certain vegetables, but wherever you are in the world, it doesn’t mean that you should start importing them. If you really want to “eat like a Viking” then you should start thinking about what local foods are available to you, lest we let the ideals of Nordic Diet get co-opted by health fanatics that take it the way of superfoods, putting certain ingredients on a pedestal even though they come from thousands of miles away. Just because someone in Northern Sweden is eating reindeer jerky doesn’t mean you necessarily need to be.

But there are many takeaways from the Nordic Diet no matter where we are. It frowns upon processed foods and refined grains, something we should all be frowning upon, it promotes eating in season, consuming less meat and doing more cooking at home. If there was one diet that we should all stick to, it’s this one. Because it’s actually not even a diet, it’s just a smart and healthy approach to food.

If anything, we can hope that this fervor for the Nordic diet will simply translate into people thinking more about what they eat and where their food comes from. That’s the best kind of diet we can all be on.

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The post The Nordic Diet: Eating Like a Viking is Good for All of Us appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnDo we really know how to eat healthy, or do we just think we do?

I saw an image on Pinterest last week, a baking pan full of frozen fruit, being topped off with cake mix. Below it was this caption: “Frozen berries, dry cake mix, and 1 can of sprite. 350 for 35 min, yummy cobbler. I have done this a lot- it is so good and weight watcher friendly!” Whoever had posted it to Pinterest had also commented “I would use diet soda and what about an angel food cake mix?”

I sighed. You want a quick fruit cobbler? Whatever happened to frozen fruit topped with oats and honey? Why are we so quick to jump to products like cake mix and Sprite? And don’t even get me started on the belief that using a diet soda would be better.

I give nutrition and health a lot of thought, not just because I myself want to live a healthy lifestyle, but because I look at the escalating figures of obesity and health related issues in the U.S. and I wonder where we went wrong. And in a world where we think that we are more food conscious – simply because we watch more food television shows and read more food blogs, not because we actually take steps to eat better – I think this question is particularly important. Do we not know how to eat healthy?

We have an unhealthy relationship to food, one that is based on extremes. You’re either overweight and overindulgent, or you’re at the gym 4 hours a day, cutting yourself off from the pleasures of life. There’s rarely a happy medium.

Weight Watchers was founded in 1963, and since then it has built a global empire based on helping people to lose weight. That goal is admirable; there is nothing wrong with inspiring people to live healthier lives. Weight Watchers is one of many businesses that works in this field, and when I see things like the Pinterest comment above, it’s apparent that while there are many diet plans and books out there, we still have don’t have a solid understanding of nutrition.

A cobbler made with dry cake mix and a can of Sprite is far from “healthy,” even if it makes the cut on a diet-oriented point system, not to mention how many additives you are consuming. But that’s the problem about food, we think of eating more as a sum of individual parts than the whole. Which is how we end up in a situation where someone thinks that making something with cake mix and a can of Sprite is a smart weight choice. News flash: it isn’t.

But this isn’t to harp on Weight Watchers, they’re not the problem; our understanding of nutrition is. We don’t know how to eat healthy. We haven’t put a value on real food. We have forgotten how to keep things simple.

Living in France, I am often asked by visitors how it is that the French manage to eat all of their decadent delights yet stay so trim. The answer to that is multi-faceted, it has to do with smaller portion sizes, less time spent sitting in cars and more time walking, and being better in tune with your body to know when you are full, and when you are full, you stop. The French have mastered that one thing that in America we are slow to understand: you can eat real food and not feel guilty about it.

But there’s another component: while France abounds with supermarkets, and more and more people do their shopping in these places, the French diet is still made up of much fewer processed items than the American diet. Consider this: in a study done by U.S. and British researchers on high fructose corn syrup and the correlation to diabetes, it was found that in the U.S., the consumption of high fructose corn syrup per capita is 25 kilograms (55 pounds) per year. In France it’s less than 1 kilogram (2 pounds).

Why do Americans ingest so much high fructose corn syrup? It’s not because every American household has a gallon of it in the pantry and pours it over everything they eat. On the contrary, it’s a product that’s hidden in so many processed foods that have become staples in the average American diet. And it’s not just a problem for adults, kids are affected too. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 70 percent of toddler dinners studied contained too much salt, and most cereal bars, breakfast pastries and snacks aimed at infants and toddlers contained added sugars.

We don’t know how to eat healthy because we’re convinced that a packaged product that says is good for us actually is good for us, when it has been shown that the best diet out there isn’t a diet at all; it’s just a lifestyle based around eating real food.

In fact, it’s as if we are utterly shocked to find out that it’s not huge, decadent meals that are killing us, but instead all that snacking that we love to eat. All those quick, processed items that sneak their way into our diets without us even realizing it. In 1996, the average American consumed around 423 calories worth of snacks per day, compared to 580 calories in 2006, which accounts for 25 percent of the average Americans total calorie intake. Through snacking we have essentially added an entire additional meal’s worth of calories to our day.

If we are going to truly focus on how to eat healthy in the U.S., then we need to focus on better nutrition programs that educate people about real food.

Products won’t save your health, but real food will.

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The post Do We Really Know How to Eat Healthy? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

These healthy seeds can serve as great snacks and beyond.

As we enter a new year, many of you are looking for ways to eat healthier, and if there’s one area of your diet to start with it’s snacks. Many of us snack almost unconsciously, just grabbing a handful of whatever’s in front of us. But snacking doesn’t have to be bad for you; as long as you are intentional with what you’re consuming, a great snack can give you the extra boost you need to get you through the day.

If there’s one perfect natural snack, it’s definitely seeds. Be they pumpkin or sunflower seeds, they pack a punch nutritionally, and you’ll feel much better off after a handful of them than a handful of potato chips. I promise.

But these healthy seeds shouldn’t just be reserved for snack foods. Use them at any time of the day. Throw them in your morning oatmeal, add them to a stir fry. You can even use them as a topping to ice cream. Whoever said dessert had to be bad for you? Here are seven healthy seeds with plenty of ideas for how to use them.

1. Sunflower seeds

An excellent source of vitamin E and magnesium, sunflower seeds are versatile and easy to cook with. You can even turn them into sunflower butter. To optimize the nutritional value, opt for raw sunflower seeds.

2. Pumpkin seeds

Also referred to as pepitas, pumpkin seeds have a dark green color and they’re a great source of vitamin B. If you’re buying pumpkins, you can of course toast your own, and raw pumpkin seeds can be used to make pesto. You might also find pumpkin seed oil at your local health food store, some have called it the “new coconut oil” as its full of all the good stuff that your body craves.

3. Sesame seeds

A good source of copper and manganese, toast up sesame seeds and make your own tahini, a great base for creamy vegan sauces and dressings. You can get both white and black sesame seeds, and the black ones happen to make for a great addition to Asian noodle dishes.

4. Flax seeds

Oh glorious flax seed, what would we do without you? Grind flax seeds into a fine meal and you can use them like flour, or mix with warm water and get a vegan-friendly egg replacement. The options for flax seed recipes are endless, and your body will thank you for all the fiber you’re giving it.

5. Hemp seeds

If you haven’t experimented with hemp seeds yet, 2015 is definitely the year to do it. Protein, omega-3s, fiber, vitamins; you name it and hemp seeds probably have it. You can use them to replace bulgur in a tabouli, or make up a batch of homemade energy bars.

6. Pomegranate seeds

Once you’ve mastered the art of peeling a pomegranate (I highly recommend the bowl of water method) there’s no stopping you and your consumption of pomegranate seeds. They’re great on salads or just on their own, and they’re a great source of antioxidants.

7. Chia seeds

Chia seeds are sort of the superstars of the healthy seed world. They’re full of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins and minerals. Chia seeds can magically turn into a tasty sugar-free fruit jam or even a vegan pudding.

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The post 7 Healthy Seeds You Need to Add to Your Diet Today appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column New years resolutions to keep you eating well in 2015.

A new year, a new chance, right? With a blank slate, the world is your oyster. You could completely change your diet overnight if you really felt like. You could go from meat loving, bacon drooler to hardcore raw vegan overnight if you felt like it. Yes, the birth of a new year always gives us the opportunity for change.

Now normally, I am not big on new year’s resolutions, mostly because so often we set ourselves up for failure. We’ll do this, we’ll avoid that. New years resolutions are for the most part very black and white, with no room for the gray area. But life is all about the gray area.

Food related new years resolutions however don’t have to be black and white. Sure, you could commit to cutting out sugar, but you could also come up with a more sustainable option like “learn how to bake a cake without refined sugar.” Food allows us to experiment, and in the new year, what better way to live healthier than to get creative with what we eat?

With that in mind, here are ten new years resolutions that are all about eating and eating well.

1. Incorporate new foods – how about one a week?

If we’re not careful, routines can quickly turn into ruts. Take inspiration from the #52newfoods challenge and incorporate a new food – or a new way of preparing a food – every single week. It will keep you out of your culinary rut.

2. Find local replacements whenever possible

How about a little olive oil instead of coconut oil? Or blueberries instead of goji berries? There are plenty of things in our everyday diets that have alternatives that can be sourced from closer to home.

3. Learn how to bake a cake without refined sugar

You didn’t think I’d leave this off the list did you? You’d be surprised how many alternatives there are to sugar, and it doesn’t have to mean that your end product tastes like hippy sawdust.

4. Cut out meat for a certain number of meals, or days, every week

The world would be better off if we all ate less meat. However, not everyone is ready to go vegetarian. That’s ok. But what you can do is committing to eating less. If you already have one meat-free day in the week, why not make it two? Set a goal.

5. Stop using coffee pods

If you already ditched that nasty habit in 2014, good for you (and the planet). For the rest of you, please oh please don’t buy into this expensive, wasteful trend.

6. Cook a meal from a country whose cuisine you don’t know anything about

Certain ethnic cuisines get a lot of exposure – Mexican, Thai, Italian – but there is an entire world of food out there waiting to be explored. Don’t limit yourself. Pick a country and learn a few dishes. All I have to say is this: Indonesian satay sauce.

7. Grow something edible

I don’t care if you only have a tiny balcony space with room for one planter, you can at least grow some herbs. Get those hands dirty.

8. Don’t buy food based on looks

Good looking food doesn’t always mean better food, so remember that appearance shouldn’t trump quality. Support those ugly vegetables!

9. Decide on a few staples that you can make yourself

There are so many grocery store products that we could easily be making ourselves. Almond butter? Yup, you can do that at home. Nutella? No point in getting store-bought ever again. Rice milk? Cut that off the shopping bill.

10. Stay informed

To keep voting with your fork, you have to know what’s going on in the world of food. Want to keep up with what’s happening in food politics? A few great resources include Civil Eats, Marion Nestle’s Food Politics and Food Tank.

Now, here’s to a healthy and delicious 2015!

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The post 10 New Year’s Resolutions All About Food: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Food subscription boxes you’ll want to take a bite out of. 

If you like discovering new foods, there’s no shortage of options, especially when you get those new foods delivered straight to your door. But this isn’t just about getting tasty food without having to leave the house, it’s about supporting cool food businesses and having fun in the process. Maybe even discovering a new favorite food you never knew existed.

Trust me, this isn’t your average Wine of the Month Club.

1. Hot Sauce

Love to smother everything you eat in hot sauce? Then you need Sauce Pack. These food subscription boxes will come to your door every month with one thing and one thing only: American made hot sauces. You’ll end up with three new bottles of hot sauce every month, ensuring that you’ll never go without a spicy meal. You can choose a variety of subscription options, from Mild Mannered (one pack, billed monthly) to Hell in a Handbasket (12 packs, billed yearly).

2. Coffee and Chocolate

When it comes to voting with your fork, coffee and chocolate are two of the goods where what you’re buying really matters. Coffee and chocolate aficionados will be happy to know they’re buying the good stuff in the Caffe Vita and Theo Chocolate subscription. This craft coffee roaster from Seattle is committed to sourcing and working directly with its farmers, so its no surprise that their sustainability ethos aligned with local chocolate company Theo Chocolate, who makes sure all of their cocoa beans are organic and Fair Trade certified. The subscription includes one 12 ounce bag of coffee and one chocolate bar every month, and can be bought in 3, 6 or 12 month subscriptions.

3. Vegan Snacks

While you’re good at making your own green smoothies and all, sometimes you just want an easy, packaged snack. For that there’s the Vegan Snack Box from Vegan Cuts. Full of vegan-friendly treats, from chips to tea, these snacks are sure to feed your junk food craving, and without the guilt. The boxes are available in 1, 3, 6 and 12 month subscriptions.

4. Pickles

Oh you wanted a pickle subscription? Well, you can get that. Mouth, the company behind the Pickles Every Month subscription, is devoted to promoting indie food, so you can be sure that your pickles aren’t your average ones off the grocery shelf. And it won’t just be your classic pickled cucumbers; you’ll find your way working through pickled beets, carrots, cauliflower, okra, garlic scapes, peppers, grapes, garlic, cherries, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fennel. Pickles Every Month is available in 3, 6, 9 and 12 month subscriptions.

5. Snacks that Give Back

What’s neat about Love With Food isn’t just what’s in their food subscription boxes – organic and all-natural, healthy snacks – but what comes along with it. For every box that goes out, Love With Food donates meal to a hungry child. Working with different food banks, since launching Love With Food has donated more than 320,000 meals.

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ColumnThe beauty of real food boiled down into simple words.

Eat real food, and eat well.

Usually Foodie Underground is a lengthy column about some version of the six words above. Sometimes I feel that every week I am just trying to find a new and creative way to say the exact same thing: eat real food. One week it can be an argument for buying dirty vegetables, another a dive into the world of direct trade coffee. But ultimately, the message remains the same. And when you write the same message all the time, you have to learn how to switch it up.

So this week, I figured that I should try a different spin on it. Yes, today’s column is all about real food, just as usual, except today it’s not a column; it’s a collection of haikus.

Why haikus? Because like real food, haikus are simple. They get to the essence of things in just a few syllables. What better way to talk about the simplicity and beauty of real food than this?

With that, here are 10 haikus all about good, simple food and eating well.

Autumn always brings

Another harvest season

Ripe for the taking

Food on the table

Drink poured into every glass

Is this not living?

Easy, simple, fast

Is there better happiness

Than fridge leftovers?

If you cannot pick

What stares at you from the plate

Cannot be real food

Dirt on your fingers

Smell of rain permeating

This is how food grows

It begins a seed

Growing into mighty plant

Cut for sustenance

We were all seeds once

This we share with food we eat

Born from Mother Earth

War is waged daily

McDonalds, Burger King

Food battles we fight

Orange, red, yellow

Exploding from the table

Colorful season

We must breath and eat

Good food sustains the good life

Take time to enjoy

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The post 10 Haikus About Real Food: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

 ColumnFrustrated with the food system? Be empowered to make better choices. Start a food fight.

Feeling overwhelmed by the food system?

That’s normal.

In a world of big business and industrial scale food production it’s hard not to get overwhelmed. Food borne illness outbreaks, stories of animal abuse, widespread soil pollution, foods that purposefully are made to be addictive, skyrocketing obesity rates, high fructose corn syrup in literally nearly everything and fast food chains offering “low fat meals” because it’s a good business option. It’s enough to make anyone want to crawl into a hole and subsist of of grains and greens for the rest of their life.

What can you do about it? Make smart food choices. While we unfortunately have little to no control over what other people put into our food, we do have control over one thing: what we put into our bodies. If you control what you consume, that choice in turn affects the larger system at hand. Because when it comes to food, the most subversive thing you can do is grow and cook your own.

Overwhelmed by the system? Don’t be part of the problem, be a part of the change. Just because we’re fed bad food, doesn’t mean we have to eat it. Throwing up our hands up in surrender solves nothing, we have to fight back.

But doing so is a choice. One that takes commitment. You can’t expect to simply wake up one morning and be eating healthily and ethically. It takes work.

It begins by cutting some things out and adding others in. Less processed food, more leafy greens.

It follows by finding a balance that you can easily maintain.

It requires looking at the labels.

It requires saying no.

It requires sticking to morals.

It requires refusing to eat or drink the stuff we know we shouldn’t be consuming. No one, I repeat no one, ever needs a special Taco Bell soda, no matter what the occasion.

It requires thinking about cost as more than the number on the price tag.

It requires celebrating food instead of looking at eating and cooking as a task.

Those of us that are fortunate to be able to make the choice to eat better and more healthy have the obligation to do so. There are many that are simply subject to what the system gives them, and if the rest of us can’t go out on a limb and make the choices that will make a difference, fight the food fight that needs to be fought, then who will?

We should be enraged at the current state of food and public health. We should be furious at the policy of profit over health. And yet we often just continue down the path of ignorance is bliss because it’s easier to stay comfortable than push ourselves a little. Give up the organic bananas that were shipped across the world. Don’t eat factory farmed meat. Grow something. Anything.

Demand more. Not voting with our fork is a sign of giving up.

We can feel overwhelmed by the food system, but as long as we are not taking the steps to make our personal food consumption better, how can we expect the rest to change?

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The post It’s Time We Put up a Food Fight: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhen you eat, is it just another task, or something you make time to enjoy?

A French friend and I were talking recently about eating habits. This is of course a common discussion when it comes to looking at the differences in American and French culture.

“It is unthinkable to not have a sit down dinner,” he said, referring to the fact that in the large majority of French households, families sit down, together, to eat dinner. Skipping it would be on the verge of sacrilegious.

Look at the average American household, however. Bobby has soccer practice, Molly has to finish up a school project at a friend’s and mom and dad are both pulling long days at the office. Dinner, is eating a bowl of microwaved Top Ramen, consumed while standing at the kitchen counter in the ten-minute window that each individual person has identified as their own time to eat.

Eating is something that we fit in between all of our other tasks, while for the French, the everyday tasks of life are what they do in between the times that they eat.

This is, of course, a sweeping generalization.

Go into any supermarket in France and you’ll see people buying the exact same processed foods as in the U.S. Fast food joints have now overtaken traditional restaurants in popularity. And yet, there is still a tradition that ties people to eating in a way that is rarely present in the U.S.–and it’s a tradition that values the holistic nature of a meal.

For many Americans, eating is about the nutritional value; it’s a scientific process, more than it’s a cultural one. We boil a meal down to carbohydrates, proteins and fats. How much of this and how much of that do I need to maintain my energy and function, but also not gain weight in the process? We’re diet obsessed, and whether it’s conscious or not, it’s a constant dance of thinking about calories and our intake and output. We’re running an ongoing mental calorie calculator.

That’s a depressing way to eat. And not only depressing, it’s unhealthy.

Sitting down to a meal with friends and family provides emotional sustenance as well as nutritional. It’s a joyful affair. You might get all the calories and fiber that you need from a bowl of brown rice, broccoli and black beans, but if it’s eaten on-the-go, in ten minutes, you miss out on all the other aspects that eating brings us.

Eating can be a meditative process. Sit down for an hour-long (or two, or three) dinner and that’s an hour where you’re not doing anything else. It’s time for brain to disengage with the outside world and focus on the food in front of you and the people around you.

My friend and I began talking about Thanksgiving. “It’s the one day of the year where people really are focused on family and food and nothing else,” I said.

He responded, “while for a French person that happens every night.”

It’s true in a way. Certainly not every single lunch and dinner in France is a grand affair, but there is a process to eating, one that puts an appreciation into the food but also the manner in which it’s consumed. You don’t eat an on-the-go snack in the middle of the afternoon, because a sit down dinner awaits you in only a few hours.

An American/British friend who recently came to Paris from London said that for her one of the main differences about the two cities is that in London you practically have to make an effort to avoid street food, while in France, popping into a shop for a snack is rare, and if you are hungry at 3 in the afternoon, you have to work a little harder to find something to eat because you just missed the lunch service.

The 24-hour access to food that is then consumed in a matter of minutes isn’t just bad for us because of the calories; it’s bad because it eliminates all the other beneficial aspects of eating a communal, sit down meal. And as fast food continues to permeate French culture – Burger King is coming back soon – it’s something that the French are going to have to take a long, hard look at, because ultimately, the infusion of fast food culture means the death of slow food.

Want to eat better? Put less time into thinking about calories and more time into thinking about the process. Slow down and enjoy the meal and the people around you.

Not just once in a while, or on a holiday, but everyday.

Related on EcoSalon: 

How Food Builds Community: Foodie Underground

The Joy of Eating Seasonally and Locally: Foodie Underground

Thanksgiving Food for Thought: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Daniel Lee

The post To Eat is Not a Task, the Argument for Slowing Down: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnJust a few unusual uses for kale.

Right outside my window hang two pots of kale.

Kale. You may have heard of it. It’s a leafy green that trendy people are eating in New York City social circles apparently. And putting in smoothies. Yeah, that thing. Some are even calling it “the new beef.”

I even have a few plants growing off of the window guard rail. Sometimes a pigeon flies up and tries to sit in the pots and I yell and scream like a madwoman. “Get off my damn kale!” 

Kale might in fact be the food du jour, well actually, it might already be passe. But hell, you can put kale on anything, and just in case you were tempted, here is a list of just a few ways to put kale to good use. Because kale chips are so very last year, and it’s about time you upped the foodie ante.

1. The all kale diet.

2. Use kale to find a romantic partner. 

3. Bake a chocolate cake.

4. Infuse a kale cocktail.

5. Tie dye a shirt.

6. Serve it with ginger.

7. Kale popcorn.

8. Moisturize with it.

9. Make your own placemats when you finally decide to switch to a 100% biodegradable dinner table setting.

10. Pesto.

11. Popsicles.

12. Pizza.

13. Kale kombucha smoothie. No, really.

14. Kale muffins.

15. Improve your sex life.

16. Bake some kale scones and host a tea party.

17. Gluten free chocolate chip cookies.

18. Salsa.

19. Channel Martha Stewart and decorate your home with it.

20. Wear it.

21. Use it instead of flowers in a vase (well, preferably a mason jar). 

22. Make green food coloring.

23. Give yourself a kale facial.

24. Cupcakes for your child’s birthday party.

25. Kale ice cubes. 

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Bobbi Bowers 

The post Foodie Underground: 25 Uses for Kale You May Never Have Thought Of appeared first on EcoSalon.