Kate Bratskeir - A Pocket Guide to Sustainable Food Shopping: How to Navigate the Grocery Store, Read Labels, and Help Save the Planet

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First Tiller Press trade paperback edition January 2021

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Interior design by Laura Levatino

Cover design by Patrick Sullivan

Author photo by Lori Gutman

Fish and carrot silhouette by Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bratskeir, Kate, author.

Title: A pocket guide to sustainable food shopping : how to navigate the grocery store, read labels, and help save the planet / by Kate Bratskeir.

Description: First Tiller Press trade paperback edition. | New York : Tiller Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016363 (print) | LCCN 2020016364 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982150068 (paperback) | ISBN 9781982150075 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Grocery shopping. | Nutrition.

Classification: LCC TX356 .B73 2020 (print) | LCC TX356 (ebook) | DDC 641.3/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016363

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016364

ISBN 978-1-9821-5006-8

ISBN 978-1-9821-5007-5 (ebook)

To Ben, for being the best

T here are some things you should know.

First, Im so glad youre here. Im excited by this growing, collective desire to make changes to become more sustainable so our planet can thrive. Maybe youve seen the images of plastic-covered seashores, animals with their heads caught in milk jugs, and countries engulfed in so much food packaging, the debris makes mountains of its own. Youve read headlines about rising temperatures, melting ice caps, raging fires. Maybe you know that the people responsible for growing the food we eat are those most likely to go hungry. Or that our obsession with almond milk is sabotaging the bee population. Whatever you know, you also know you want to do something about it.

The good news is that theres a lot you can do. And I hope these pages can serve as your guidebook for making an impact. Feel free to jump around these pages and focus on the chapters that matter to you. From cutting down on your food and packaging waste to knowing what to look for in so-called sustainable seafood, youll learn how to form buying (and not-buying!) decisions that do more good than harm.

But the truth is, even if you resolve to use a tote bag at the supermarket for eternity and follow the rest of these to-dos, you will by no means save the world. I believe theres a lot of good service in this book, and if you want to, you can learn a lot. Still, its not enough.

It can feel so futilehopeless?to change a habit, knowing every little adjustment is just a tiny drop in a bucket. But what you do will have an impact as it echoes among your family, your community, your grocery store, your favorite oat milk brand, and the food industry at large. The food system is deeply flawed, and systemic change needs to come from the inside if were going to combat climate change, feed more people, treat both laborers and animals with humanity, and continue to share in the joy of food. The food industry, however, is going to stay exactly the same if, by surrendering with inaction, we allow it to.

The fact that just 9 percent of the worlds plastic is recycled, and that most of the remaining 91 percent leaches toxins into our waterways and threatens the livelihoods of people, animals, and ecosystems, and that all this junk will outlive usthis is not your fault. Corporations and retailers both have a role to play in our giant plastic problem, and as consumers, our role is to communicate that we no longer stand for it. We can do that by writing our own rules and spending our money with those who want to take responsibility and get this right.

Throughout the process of writing this book, Ive struggled a lot with guilt. Ive read so much that emphasizes how the world is on fire, and here I am, trying to extinguish the flames by telling people how to buy rice from the bulk section of the supermarket. The scale seems severely imbalanced here.

My defense, as I do my best to reconcile, is this: Ive collected some information that Ive thoroughly researched, Ive put time into these pages, and maybe I can teach someone something new. Maybe this book will serve as a gateway to real, productive change. Maybe if enough of us carve out portals that motivate people and their communities to make positive change, the needle will move with us.

Im trying. Your reading this book means that youre trying, too. The only thing I know is that this has to be better than not trying at all.

O nce you begin to notice plastic and other needless waste, you wont be able to stop noticing. Youll wonder why that tin of organic nuts you bought had to come with a plastic seal. Youll roll your eyes at plastic straws, kick yourself for allowing a beautiful bunch of carrots to shrivel, feel physically ill over taking a swig from a plastic water bottle, and question why the hell you have so many Christmas ornaments, anyway.

Ive spent a lot of time feeling really terrible about every imperfect purchasing decision Ive made. (Sometimes I cant bear to tell a cashier I have my own bag when theyve already expertly packed my stuff.) Anne Marie Bonneau, aka the Zero-Waste Chef, has dubbed this condition Environmental Guilt Syndrome. EGS stems from the desire to be perfect in the decisions you make to cut your plastic consumption and never let a sweet potato sprout eyes and wrinkle again. But its impossible to be perfect, Bonneau says. I think if you try to be perfect, youre just going to be paralyzed, and you might not do anything.

Bonneaus EGS is along the same lines as eco-anxiety, a condition the American Psychological Association describes as the feelings of helplessness and dread associated with watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations. This is real stuff.

Theres a saying thats popular in the waste-focused space that might help you shake some guilt: We dont need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.

Also: the gargantuan amount of waste our world has produced, collected, and improperly disposed ofnone of that is your fault. Our society is not set up to make it easy to live sustainably, Bonneau points out. Were all swimming upstream.

But the point is were still swimming. More and more people are committing to sustainable practices every day, and for this reason, we can have hope.