viva verde

spent my Tuesday night traveling (carpool!) to LA where the great people who created Sustainable Works hosted a lecture on the Low Carbon Diet.

Held in the Southern CA version of San Fran, Santa Monica we decided to beat the crazy traffic by going up a few hours early and visit some of the places that reflect the topic of the evening.

First up: Urth Cafe, where you can get organic elixirs and locally raised delights in a wonderful patio, this place is a local fave and a hot spot for the eco-celebs.

(me having a organic, local salad of feta, roma tomatoes, fresh bread and fruits)

after the meal, we decided to venture across the street to their local community garden, a small patch of land in the middle of a busy area.

(a sunflower up-close and the gardens bounty!)

This 2 hour lecture was presented by Helen York of Bon Appetit (no not the mag), a consulting, education and food service company transforming American eating institutions in sustainable and responsible business and food practices. York in this SUPER informative presentation discussed “food miles” way beyond the 1,500 from farm to table speech that i think we have heard a number of times (and according to them, that figure that only consisted of strawberries, milk and sugar..basically yogurt).

(parts of the presentation)

I have been preparing for a presentation next week at Fullerton’s Belly Sprout and this was a perfect time to gain some added knowledge. Some of the things i learned:

• Maine lobster is the worst thing for us in So Cal to eat (carbon-wise)
• 1/3 of all greenhouse gases are from the agriculture industry
• beef, lamb (like we know!), cheese (yikes!) and rice are also big carbon emitters
• a ton of the contributions to Global Warming come from the methane as a result of food waste (up to 30% is wasted!) this in addition to bioplastics are turned into methane in the landfill…therefore, eat all of you food!!
• local may not mean local: they should be growing in season in a method that that uses the least amount of energy.

if you are interested in hearing more from that presentation, you will have to see my version of it at Belly Sprout.