Before living with my girlfriend, I wasn’t mindful about my cooking and eating habits. I would order takeout often, be wasteful, and generally have little to no regard for sustainability. Once I started dating her, she introduced me to sustainable living, and when we moved in together, I had to really change up my cooking and eating habits. I didn’t know where to start, and googling it was a bit overwhelming. There are hundreds of articles out there saying different things, some promoting one diet over another with no real basis or reasoning behind their decisions. So, I decided to make a resource for beginners like me who want to adopt more sustainable cooking habits. This isn’t a guide on what the BEST method is, but rather a resource with suggestions that you can take and adapt for your own lifestyle.

But before we get really into it, we should start by answering the following questions:

What is sustainable cooking?
How can I start eating in a more eco-friendly way?
Why does it matter?

Sustainable cooking is a mindful, eco-friendly approach to selecting and preparing food that is healthy for both you and the environment. This includes taking a harder look at the sourcing of your ingredients, how you’re preparing them, and making more deliberate choices that will not only reduce your environmental impact, but also allow you to eat healthier while saving money. By cooking sustainably, you will be making better choices for the environment, for animals, and for you.

Let’s break it down and see what you can start doing to cook and eat more sustainably. At the end of the article, we’ll have everything summed up for you in our key takeaways section.

Building sustainable food habits starts with your mindset

The first step into adopting sustainable cooking habits is to change the way you think about it. Looking back at my previous food habits, a lot of the decisions I made were all about convenience (and let’s be honest, a dash of laziness too). After a long day at work, the last thing I’d want to do is to cook a meal from scratch. Ordering takeout was a MUCH more attractive option. As it so happens, the convenient option isn’t always the best one in terms of health or environmental impact.

Fortunately, all it takes, really, is to add a bit of forethought and planning into the process.

If you’ve read any books on habit-building, like Atomic Habits by James Clear, you know that one of the essential steps in building a new habit is to set up your environment to make those choices easier to make. For example, packing your gym bag the night before will make you more likely to follow through and hit the gym. But what does that mean for sustainable eating habits?

First thing’s first: you can start by deleting your takeout and food delivery apps. Sounds scary? It is. It’ll force you to rely on preparing your food rather than ordering it out of convenience. But there’s a huge upside: by opting to prepare your own food rather than order takeout, you’re not only greatly reducing your environmental impact, but you’re also more likely to eat healthier (and your bank account will thank you too).

Food takeout and delivery may not seem so bad, but they’re incredibly wasteful. Plastic bags and containers, aluminum foil wraps, paper napkins, plastic utensils, and straws; these are usually present in most delivered meals. Someone also brings the food to you, typically by car so that the delivery time is kept short. And let’s not even get started on all the service fees, delivery fees, and surge prices that take a toll on your wallet. By choosing to prepare your own food, you’re opting out of all of that.

“Yeah, but I’m saving a lot of time,” you might say.

But are you? Are you really? When you order food, it doesn’t magically appear in front of you in seconds. It has to be prepared and, well, delivered. That usually takes anywhere from 15 minutes to sometimes over an hour.

“Yeah, but I’m tired and don’t feel like cooking a meal after the long day I’ve had.”

Well, there’s a simple solution to that too. Meal prep (woohoo). Now before you roll your eyes, groan, and close the page, hear me out. Meal prepping can sound boring, time-consuming, and even intimidating. It doesn’t have to be. Trust me, I’m lazy. I’ve also found that meal prep can be fun, fast, and easy with the right approach.

Meal prep: the gateway drug of sustainable cooking

A lot of people discount meal prep because they think they have to spend an entire day in the kitchen, juggling multiple complicated meals, in a stressful environment. I used to be one of those people. But with a bit of forethought and planning, I was able to make my meal prepping a lot easier, and you can too!

Meal prep doesn’t start in the kitchen. It starts with you. Take some time to think about your upcoming week. How busy will you be? How often will you be home? Which days are likely to leave you tired? With those questions answered, you can take a more strategic approach to planning your meals. Let’s say you’re going to be on the go quite a bit next week. You’ll need meals that aren’t messy and can be transported easily (like sandwiches, or even soup that you can put in a thermos). If you plan on having a few long days, maybe you’ll want a warm hearty meal (like a chili or stew that you can reheat on the stove or in the microwave).

Now pick a day and time where you can set aside a couple of hours to prepare your meals for the week. I prefer Sunday mornings, as I can enjoy a nice coffee and some beats or a podcast while I make my food. Whatever day you pick, you’ll have to make sure to get your ingredients before then. And the ingredients you get depend on the meals you’ll want to make.

Here’s how to keep all of that simple: plan and prep your meals in bulk. This will allow you not only to buy in bulk (thus reducing the overall packaging and cost of your food), but also prepare several meals, some of which you can freeze for later dates. For example, when I make a chili, I make about 8 portions; 4 for the week, and 4 that I freeze just in case. I pack them in reusable, washable containers or Ziploc bags (yes, those can be washed and reused).

The great thing about making your meals in bulk is that a lot of times the prep involves 3 simple steps: Chopping, Assembly, and Waiting. Making chili? Chop up your ingredients, assemble them (dump them) in a pot, and wait for it to cook and reduce on the heat. Soup? Same thing. Stew? Same thing. Pasta, lasagna, quiche (we fancy)? All involve some chopping, assembly, and waiting.

In one 2-hour meal prep session, you can make enough meals for the entire week and then some, especially if you use your time waiting for one meal to be done cooking to prep another meal. Is your soup on the heat for the next couple of hours? Use that time to make some tuna patties. Are your spaghetti noodles boiling for the next 8-12 minutes? Use that time to assemble some sandwiches. Take some breaks from time to time to have yourself a little dance party in your kitchen. Have some fun with it!

We’ll be sharing some of our quick and easy meal prep recipes, so stay on the lookout for those!

What are examples of sustainable food?

Cooking at home is one step in fostering more eco-friendly eating habits, but it certainly isn’t the only one. You can also be mindful about what ingredients you’re choosing to make a difference. A big part of sustainable food has to do with the sourcing of your ingredients; where you’re getting them, how the ingredients are harvested, what resources go into their production, and the ethics behind the entire thing.

Most sustainable diets are plant-based, though that doesn’t mean you have to cut out meat entirely. Now, we’re not saying one diet is better than the other. We’re also not saying that if you eat meat, you’re a bad person. You can still eat meat while taking a sustainable approach to it; in fact, many meat products are more sustainable than others. That being said, reducing your meat consumption can also help reduce your environmental impact (and it’s healthier for you, too). Doing one meatless day per week for a year (so about 52 days per year) is the equivalent to saving the same amount of emissions as driving up to 348 miles (about 560 kilometers) in a car (https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/03/18/meatless-mondays-less-meat-less-heat).

At the end of the day, what you eat is up to you, but in order to make more sustainable decisions, here are some examples of eco-friendly foods:

Beans and Lentils

Not only are these easy to incorporate into most diets, they’re also jam-packed with healthy nutrients and protein. They are sustainable because they don’t need much water to produce high quantities, and can be incorporated in salads, sauces, soups, curries, chilis, and more!

Leafy Greens

Chances are, if it’s green and leafy, it’s good for you. They come in many different alternatives and are easy to produce with minimal resources. From spinach in your eggs, to lettuce in your salad, to crispy kale chips as a snack, there are an enormous amount of ways to include leafy greens into your diet.

Organic and Local Fruits and Vegetables

Organic foods tend to involve far fewer pesticides in the growing process, allowing for the soil used to stay viable long-term. It also allows for more natural products. Local, seasonal fruits and vegetables greatly reduce your environmental impact while also supporting local businesses and communities (more on that in another article). By opting for those options, you’ll introduce a lot of variety to your diet, which is also great for your gut health.

Rice

Rice is easy to grow, doesn’t require much water, and is incredibly cheap in large quantities. You can get yourself a large, 7kg (about 15lbs) bag of rice for about $20 at most grocery stores, and it can easily last you a few months.

Which Meats are Sustainable?

In general, meat is difficult to produce sustainably because it requires a large amount of land and resources to house and feed the animals. That’s not even mentioning how the animals are treated, which in a mass-production setting tends to be pretty unethical. In general, lamb and beef tend to be the least sustainable options as their meat production requires substantial amounts of water and result in large quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions (not just the animals farting, but also the transportation, processing, and other steps involved in making the food product). Poultry tends to be better from an environmental standpoint, but regardless of your meat of choice, you should also look into how the animals are treated. Factory farming not only treats animals with terrible conditions (cramped cages as the easiest example of this), but those conditions often lead to disease.

When choosing your meats, look into how the meat product of your choice is produced, and try to go for more sustainable, ethically-sourced options. Food caught in the wild is the most sustainable option here, as the resources for producing the food product are much less than farmed options.

In general, taking a bit of time to research the ingredients you buy will help you make better choices from an environmental and ethical standpoint.

Putting it all together: Key Takeaways

At this point, we’ve gone over quite a bit of information, and we’re barely scratching the surface when it comes to sustainable cooking and sustainable food. We could go deeper and talk about how to make your kitchen more eco-friendly, how to manage food waste, and much more, but this is a beginner’s guide, so we’ll keep those topics for future articles.

Key Takeaways:

Delete the delivery apps.
Do yourself and the planet (and your wallet) a favor, delete the apps and start meal prepping.
Prep and optimize your meal prep.
- Meal prep in bulk. Plan it out and do it consistently. Have fun with it!
Consume sustainable alternatives.
- Look into where your ingredients come from. Buy locally-sourced ingredients if you can.
It starts with your mindset.
- Take the time to make more informed decisions. Set up your environment for success, and be more mindful about your eating habits.

As a beginner, the most important thing you can do is start being more mindful about your approach to food. By making more informed decisions, and taking some time to plan your approach, you’ll not only be able to adopt healthier food habits, but also reduce your environmental impact in the process.