Our trash comes from our crappy food
As a follow up to yesterday's post about Unprocessed October, I thought I'd share this photo of a trash can I passed on my way to the train station in Philadelphia yesterday.
You can tell a lot about people by looking at their trash, and when you look at Philadelphia's trash, it's no wonder that the city has one of the most overweight and unhealthy populations in America. I challenge any reader to find a single piece of trash in this bin that didn't at one time contain an unhealthy and unprocessed food or drink.
It's even more evidence that the health of our bodies is closely linked with the health of our planet. When we eat food that comes in a single use disposable wrapper, we consume many processed and unhealthy ingredients that we wouldn't if we were eating whole foods sans packaging. And when we eat food that comes in single use disposable wrappers, we also contribute more litter and waste to our city gutters, community beachs, and ocean depths.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 01:52PM | Throwaway Nation | 2 Comments | Share Article | Email Article Food, Litter, Processed Food, Trash Cans in Dumb Things We Do
Reader Comments (2)
Good point! The fresher our food, the healthier it is. But the fresher our food, the less packaging it needs! Packaging preserves food for shipping and distribution, but if everything was locally sourced none of that would be necessary. How can locally sourced foods be made more accessible to more communities, that's the question whose answer will solve this packaging problem.
Thanks, Ev! You raise a good question:
How can locally sourced foods be made more accessible to more communities?
It's a question that should be easy (since food was locally sourced for most of human existence, after all), but isn't. Here's a post from Triple Pundit that outlines just some of the challenges.
Alas, I'm afraid its got more questions than answers.