Lucid Food_ Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life - Louisa Shafia [31]
Best use: In all baked goods; over yogurt; on toast with nut butter.
MAPLE SYRUP AND MAPLE SUGAR CRYSTALS
Maple syrup works beautifully as a sweetener in baked desserts and can be dehydrated into crystals for a sweet, dry sugar with a maple taste. Look for maple products from local or organic producers, as large companies have been known to use the chemical paraformaldehyde to make trees “bleed” sap longer. The practice is illegal, but the chemical is still occasionally found in maple products.
Best use: Baked into cakes and cookies; as a topping for pancakes, oatmeal, and yogurt; in marinades and dessert sauces; baked into granola.
ORGANIC DATES
Dates make a satisfying dessert on their own. Date paste is a potent sweetener for cakes and cookies, or can be used as a simple raw confection rolled with nuts and coconut flakes. Date sugar, made from ground dehydrated dates, can be used in place of sugar for baking, although it is not nearly as sweet, and its dark hue can alter the color of food.
Best use: In baking, like any fruit purée or to replace dry sugar; baked into crunch topping for a crumbly texture.
STEVIA
Stevia is a plant whose leaves naturally taste sweet. Simply chew on a leaf for a sweet taste tinged with licorice, or place a fresh leaf in hot water to make tea. The dried leaves are sold as an herbal tea, but stevia is most commonly found in powder or liquid form. Just a pinch of powder or a few drops of the liquid is enough to sweeten a smoothie or a cup of hot chocolate. If you add too much, though, the flavor becomes bitter, so use it sparingly.
Best use: In fresh, powdered, or liquid form as a sweetener in beverages.
To Meat or Not to Meat
Is eating animals bad for the environment? The short answer is yes. The majority of the animal products we eat, including meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, comes from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), better known as factory farms. An abundance of environmental problems are linked to CAFOs, including water pollution from waste runoff, methane gas production caused by large concentrations of animal manure, and high pesticide quantities used in growing the grains that feed the animals. (For more on this subject, see the books listed in the section “Making Informed Food Choices,” in Resources.)
In general, the planet would almost certainly be better off if we all became vegetarians. However, it’s obvious that the world is not going to go 100 percent vegetarian any time soon.
What can you do in the meantime? Start by making meat a smaller part of your diet, and buy meat and animal products from small local farms. When you buy from small farmers, you reduce the need for factory farms, the culprits of the most tangible environmental damage.
I try to buy all of my animal proteins locally, including wild fish, free-range eggs, and milk from a dairy where I can return the glass bottles for a deposit. In general, small farm practices follow tried-and-true methods of animal husbandry that work in harmony with the ecosystem, such as feeding cattle their natural diet of grass on rotating tracts of land, eschewing the use of antibiotics, and spending fewer natural resources on transportation by selling to people within 150 miles of their farm. Small farms benefit from healthy surroundings, and most farmers make supportive gestures toward the environment like leaving parts of their land wild to encourage the return of native plants and animals, or planting trees and flowers in strategic spots that encourage the presence of birds, butterflies, bats, and bees.
If I am going to eat or serve meat, or otherwise support the practice of eating animals, I can make an informed choice about whom I pay for those products. Exercised by a critical