You don't make friends with salad!
There’s a scene from the Simpson’s movie that gets replayed in our house a lot. Vegetarian Lisa suggests some plant based dishes for the family’s barbecue and is told by her carnivore father that “you don’t make friends with salad!” It’s a whole thing. There’s a song. And it’s catchy. Despite the catchiness of the song and my husband’s insistence that you don’t make friends with salad, I have always considered salad to be a good and virtuous choice of food. The foodstuff of new years resolutions, salad is low calorie, vitamin rich and, since it’s plant-based, it’s a good choice for the environment right?
Well, it turns out that not all salads are created equal. Per calorie, growing lettuces produces more greenhouse gases such as methane than rearing pork, according to research. And those convenient bags of prewashed salad leaves are especially bad. Not only does it create unnecessary amounts of plastic but almost half of it is wasted because it is bought without a specific meal in mind and then forgotten about and binned, according to research by Tesco. Britons throw away 40% of the bagged salad they buy every year. 37,000 tonnes of the stuff is uneaten each year in the UK. That’s the equivalent of 178 million bags of salad! (Source: The Guardian)
But that doesn’t mean you should stop eating salad and go back to hamburgers!!! After all, there are tons of reasons to eat less meat. With some simple adjustments, you can both eat green and also live green! So how should you be a better salad consumer?
Eat more seasonal greens such as cabbage, spring greens, pea sprouts or beetroot leaves! It’s pretty easy to find out what’s in season in your part of the world. Google is your friend here!
Buy salad only when it you have a specific use in mind.
Try to buy more hardy (long lasting) salad varieties such as iceberg, cosmopolitan or romaine, which last longer than loose leaves.
If you do buy loose salad leaves, like spinach, store them well. Wrap them in a damp cloth inside an airtight container to keep them crisp and fresh.
Image courtesy of Johan Nilsson on Unsplash
