I Quit Sugar for Life (14 page)

I‘M OFTEN ASKED HOW I SHOP – ORGANIC? FREE-RANGE? ETHICAL? SEASONAL? ACCORDING TO THE LEAST FOOD MILES?
As a rule, I
prioritise the environment and ethics over my personal health, and work to two principles...

1. I shop as local as possible.

Why? It’s a good catch-all approach. I buy as much as I can from local markets where the farmers sell direct. Elsewhere I always check the label to see that it
hasn’t travelled around the world to get to the shelf. This ticks off the
food miles
and
seasonality
concern. It also often ticks off the
ethical
and
organic
issues. Local farmers are more likely to connect with the community and its ecological concerns.

2. I don’t waste.

I use up my scraps, reinvent my leftovers and store things properly so they don’t go off. This contributes more to the planet – and my hip pocket – than any
other approach. The biggest environmental issue on the planet, contributing more to carbon emissions than cars and industry? Food wastage. The biggest factor in the food wastage chain? Us (not the
farmers or the supermarkets). The biggest hit to our hip pocket when food shopping? Tossing out food we don’t use.

By focusing on these two things only, you might find you can shop with clarity and conscience, too.

Where possible it is better to buy organic, for a host of important reasons. But for many, organic fare just ain’t affordable. Here’s how you can prioritise your
spending if you care about chemicals in your dinner. (One caveat: I personally do not endorse buying, for example, celery from California, just because it’s organic. Local trumps this kind of
craziness.)

CHICKEN AND EGGS –
ALWAYS BUY ORGANIC

Free-range birds might be able to move outside a cage but they can still be fed nasty chemical-laden feed and supplements. Many authorities, including CHOICE, say it’s
worth investing in organic chook products. Bear in mind, with IQS we cook the whole chook, often slowly, to extract as much nutrition as possible. We certainly don’t want to be leaching
residual chemicals into our soup too! But keep it affordable . . .

LET’S TRY THIS

▶
Eat the unfashionable bits.
Drumsticks and wings are often a fraction of the cost of the more fashionable breast.

▶
Eat the whole bird.
A whole chook works out to be very economical. Especially if you . . .

▶
Extend it further.
I can make a $20 organic chook stretch to 15 meals.

▶
Make stock.
This means you use every last bit of the bird.

BEEF AND LAMB –
ORGANIC AND PASTURE-FED IS BEST

Increasingly, an important consideration when shopping for red meat is: is it pasture-or grain-fed? The latter can present a host of ethical, health and environmental issues
(the animals are kept in small lots, the grains up the omega-6 count of the meat, and using fertile land for animal grain is wasteful).

Having said that, in Australia, unlike most of the world, most lamb and 70% of beef is pasture-fed and raised on arid rangelands where nothing else can be grown (no fertile
land is wasted). Hoorah! Cattle tends to be grain-fed only in times of drought and even then just ‘grain-finished’. Only occasionally is meat specifically grown to be grain-fed, so
it’s easy to avoid.

So, the main issue here is the organic factor. Non-organic beef can be treated with growth-promoting hormones. It might say a lot to you that the European Union has banned
growth hormones and deemed them a health risk, and that Australia deems them unfit for chooks but not red meat.

LET’S TRY THIS

▶
Buy tough, unfashionable cuts.
Cuts such as chuck, brisket, shin, osso bucco and shanks are much cheaper than sirloins.

▶
Slow-cook your meat.
Which, in turn, means you use less meat (since you bulk it out with vegetables) but get maximum
flavour, and extra nutritional bang from extracting minerals and gelatine from the meat, while preserving enzymes (see
here
).

FRUIT AND VEGGIES –
ORGANIC (SOMETIMES)

There are three types of produce that tend to retain chemical residues and thus it is best to buy organic:

1.
Soft-fleshed fruit, such as stone fruit and berries.

2.
Veggies where you eat the skin, such as carrots, broccoli, peppers and celery.

3.
Leafy greens, such as lettuce and spinach, and leafy herbs such as parsley and coriander.

LET’S TRY THIS

The daggier the veg, the cheaper it is. I almost treat it as a sport – buying up the veg no one else eats (or has heard of) and finding fresh ways to use them. This
simple game is a great way to vary your diet and support seasonality. Look out for these in the supermarket:

Swede:
With a yellow and purplish skin, this relative of the turnip can be found in most supermarkets with the root veg. Steam and mash as you would parsnip or
turnip, dice and add to soups or cut into batons and eat raw (as I do – it’s super-sweet!).

Chicory:
When in season, this torpedo-shaped sweet-bitter clump of white-yellow leaves often comes in economical packs of three or four. Slice into salads,
pull apart the cupped leaves and use as you would a wrap or taco or dipping chip, or just eat raw (it’s a great hiking food as it is densely packed). You can also braise it to bring out its
sweetness.

Marrow:
These are a large vegetable that are super cheap in summer. They have a mild flavour and don’t need to be peeled. Stuff them, bake them, steam
and serve with plenty of butter.

FISH –
ALWAYS BUY SUSTAINABLE

There are a bunch of complicated considerations for buying the best kind of fish. A good idea is to download an app listing sustainable fish. In Australia, the Australian Marine
Conservation Society (AMCS) is the authority and their Sustainable Seafood Guide app is great. However, here are some general rules de thumb (which are also economical):

▶
Go for white-fleshed
(pollack, mahi mahi, mullet, whiting or coley).

▶
Avoid big predators,
such as southern bluefin tuna, shark (flake), striped marlin and swordfish, in part because
they’re chronically overfished and reproduce slowly, but also because, being at the top of the food chain, they contain large amounts of mercury.

▶
If you do eat tuna
go for skipjack tuna rather than southern bluefin, yellowfin or bigeye, which are overfished.

▶
Go for small
and fast-growing fish, which can replenish more quickly if their stocks are affected.

▶
Avoid farmed salmon.
Farms use antibiotics and that causes environmental issues, and the salmon are fed using large
quantities of smaller fish we’d be better off eating directly. Go for wild-caught salmon instead.

LET’S TRY THIS

Try sardines.
Have you ever bought them fresh? Seriously, they’re dirt cheap, stupidly good for you and one of the most sustainable options at the
fishmonger. I cook them on a sheet of foil under the grill and eat on toast with some homemade mayo and mustard. I smash grilled fresh sardines or tinned ones with lemon, pepper, chilli flakes and
parsley and spread on top of avocado toast.

Look out for fish offcuts.
These are often less than half the price of the full thing and can be used to make soup, stews or nugget-style fish ’n’
chips. When I want to eat salmon, I buy salmon tails which have lots of lovely skin on them (the most nutritious bit of the fish, so please don’t discard it!).

SUSTAINABLE FISH ’N’ CHIPS
(see
here
) This recipe uses white-fleshed offcuts.

LET’S TRY THIS

Much food wastage occurs because we think food is old and unsafe to eat. But the ‘use-by date’ and ‘best before date’ are different things. The former
tells you when a food must be eaten for health and safety reasons. The best before date gives an indication of when it’s best to eat. But supermarkets can still sell it after that date.

So, if meat or fish is marked down because the best before date is approaching, buy it up and freeze it. I do. The quality will be preserved instantly. Just ensure that you
consume it within two to three months and that you don’t refreeze it once thawed.