Bridget's Green Living: July 2014

Monday, July 14, 2014

Chefs for Oceans want to teach us a thing or two about sustainable seafood. Here's why we should listen

Ned Bell of Chefs for Oceans thinks sustainable seafood is worth the efforts, and you should too.

Ned Bell is peddling sustainable seafood, literally. A sustainable seafood activist and founder of Chefs for Oceans, Chef Bell is biking across Canada to get Canadians more interested and engaged in sustainable seafood.

Chosen as one of Canadian Living’s Top 10 Canadian Chefs You Need to Know About, Chef Bell is the executive chef at the Four Seasons Vancouver, the first upscale restaurant in Canada to go 100% sustainable for its seafood, meaning that the fish served at the restaurant is caught or farmed in a way that ensures the long-term health and stability of the fish stocks and the greater marine ecosystem.

Learning how to grill safely (and I’m not talking salmonella) will keep you healthier in the long term.

Do you ever have things that you’d like to be good at but can’t be bothered to try?

That’s my relationship with the barbecue. I would like to be good at grilling because I love the taste and the very idea of food cooked outside over a flame. Even better, a propane barbecue is more eco-friendly than the oven and there’s a lot to be said for getting out of the kitchen on a hot summer day.

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Tips: cellphone safety

-Buy a low-radiation phone. Look up your phone, or search for a new phone, in this handy guide. (Check under your battery for the model number.)

-Use a headset or speaker. A headset emits much less radiation than your phone and using speaker phone mode keeps that radiation away from your head.

-Less radiation is emitted when you're texting compared to talking, and texting keeps the radiation away from your head.

-Stay off the phone if you don’t have a strong signal. Your phone will emit even more radiation when it’s working hard to get the signal to the tower.

-Limit children’s phone use. Young children’s brains absorb twice the cell phone radiation as an adult’s.

Tips: Steer clear of bottled water

Fill water bottles at home before you head out on a road trip. Even if you’re just out and about for the afternoon.
Make sure you have enough bottles for everyone in your family (and maybe a couple of extras).
Bring an empty bottle with you when you travel. Fill it from the bathroom tap in your hotel room (so you’re not buying the expensive bottle of water in the room and can steer clear of plastic.)
Buy a carbon filter for your kitchen tap if you don’t like the taste of your tap water. Or buy a filter jug to keep in your fridge.
At restaurants ask for tap water if they offer bottled water.

Tips: Packing eco-friendly lunches:

- Reduce (or eliminate) prepackaged foods.

- Pack food in reusable containers.

- Pack stainless-steel spoons and forks. (Plastic utensils can’t be recycled).

- Use stainless steel water bottles.

- Only use plastics with 1, 2, 4 or 5 on them (inside the recycling symbol). These are food-safe numbers & recyclable.

- Don’t put food items in any containers marked #7. (It contains Bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor banned from baby bottles.)

- Don’t heat food in plastic containers, no matter what number is stamped on it.

- Reuse plastic sandwich bags & then recycle them.

- Better yet, use plastic containers and fabric snack bags instead.