Comments on: Chicken vs. ‘Chickin’: How green is my plastic-wrapped vegan meat?

By: Siel

Siel — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:02:35 +0000

Bulk beans have been v. helpful for me, since they’re easy to cook en masse and freeze to use as needed :)

By: Natalie Aldern

Natalie Aldern — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:07:49 +0000

I’ve had the same issue with going vegan.. It bothers me that so much of my diet has become processed vegetable protein. I’ve been working hard to cook according to season. That means more trips to the farmer’s market but it also means less packaging in my trash and less chemicals in my diet.

By: Siel

Siel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:10:01 +0000

Green Fish — Those sound like smart changes, as long as you’re using the whole chicken :) That’s amazing that you have a local dairy you can get milk from — Do they reuse the glass bottles?

Your comment reminds me of the couple that started the 100 mile diet and their book Plenty, reviewed here. They were actually vegans before the experiment, but through their eco-experiment came to incorporate local poultry / eggs / milk :)

By: Green Fish

Green Fish — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:38:29 +0000

My husband and I ate vegan for 6 months, in large part due to our efforts to reduce our contribution to climate change – but I had the same problem with the plastic wrapping. We’ve now switched to a diet heavy on veggies and whole grains, but we also eat local organic chicken (wrapped in paper from the meat counter) and local free range organic eggs, which I think has much less of an enviornmental impact than our non-local heavily packaged soy products. We also eat dairy, which I feel somewhat guilty about, but at least we get it in glass bottles from a local dairy whose practices have the lowest greenhouse gas foot print I’ve ever seen from a dairy. This only works for us because we aren’t vegan…

I wish there was a simple answer to these sorts of questions, but for now I guess the best solution is to stay as informed as we can, and make the best choices we can.

By: Siel

Siel — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:12:26 +0000

Hey Zandria — Easiest way to eat beans = toss them into a salad :) Add salsa and voila — a taco salad sans meat! :) And yes, getting dry beans and cooking them is v. easy — especially compared to lugging heavy cans of beans from the grocery store up the stairs! :P (Also, cans = BPA)

M — I hear you about things coming in set quantities! This is why I especially love the farmers’ market — You can buy just one carrot and don’t have to buy a whole bunch! Co-opportunity also offers most produce items loose, though I realize you’re pretty far from Santa Monica –

I too have not seen any mystical bulk tofu — but I will look for it specifically next time I’m in the Korean supermarket! Most of the tofu there’s sold in plastic packs like everywhere else, but there is a pretty big deli / prepped food section, and I’m wondering maybe they have bulk tofu there –

By: M

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:35:46 +0000

The biggest thing I’m doing this year is trying to be much more conscious and careful to no throw away food. It’s still a work in progress and it helps that my boyfriend is eating more meals at my place – buying some foods can be really frustrating if you are generally in a 1 person household because some things come in set quantities and it’s easy for me to overestimate my desire to eat the same thing all week long! The game is figuring out how to do that – sometimes I end up dehydrating things, sticking something in the freezer, going to different stores or setting aside a quantity of food before it’s “assembled” into the finished dish. Coming up with an arsenal of flexible recipes helps as well.

I have pet rats and when doing research on their diet, I came across instructions to not feed them “bulk tofu” because of bacterial content when compared to single pack of tofu. I have yet to actually find this mystical “bulk tofu” in stores however. Have you ever heard of a store carrying it? It seems like it might include less packaging.

By: Zandria

Zandria — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:34:38 +0000

I think it’s great that you put so much thought into this (I’ve been shocked at the lengthy ingredient list on faux-meat products myself). Definitely better to eat regular tofu. Speaking of your increased bean consumption, what do you usually do with them? Do you eat them by themselves or tend to mix them into soups or something? I must admit, I’ve never made dried beans before in my life, but I understand it’s not too difficult…

By: Siel

Siel — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:21:22 +0000

It sounds like our diets are pretty similar. My home kitchen’s pretty much vegan — Every few months I’ll buy a half dozen eggs at the farmers’ market, and once in a blue moon I’ll get canned tuna (much less now due to BPA and mercury concerns), and like once a year I’ll buy a salmon fillet on a whim, cook it once, then decide it’s too much of a hassle to make myself until about a year later when I no longer remember what a hassle it was to clean up.

But I do eat eggs when I go out for brunch, do eat seafood in restaurants (I try to stick to the Seafood Watch Guide), and have started eating chicken, if I know it’s free range. I used to be a pescatarian for a long time but sometimes the fish options aren’t green and the veg options are covered in cheese (I’m lactose intolerant). I had chicken a couple months ago at a friend’s bday dinner at Pete’s.

By: mudnessa

mudnessa — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:58:07 +0000

I went veg in November and am eating a mostly vegan diet since January. When I say mostly vegan I mean at home I eat vegan but if I go out I will on occasion eat pineapple fried rice with eggs or a bean and cheese burrito things like that.

My plastic intake is a lot less at home but tofu and “fake” meats do bring in more plastic than I like. I haven’t been eating much tofu in the past two weeks because I picked up chickenless nuggets and some boca burger patties. At least with the tofu I buy the packaging is recyclable curbside where as the patties come in multiple bags in a box and the nuggets come in one big plastic bag that aren’t recyclable.