Making responsible choices for your diet according to their impact on the health of our friends and family, the health of the community, and ultimately the earth, is the process that leads to establishing a green kitchen.

Once you have established sources of good, year-round, local organic food, the new green diet becomes one of simplicity and convenience. If seasonal, local food determines our menus, half our work is done. If we allow our taste buds to savor the full flavor of freshly picked vegetables and fruit, we naturally begin to turn away from packaged and processed food by choice.

Step 1: Eat Organically Produced Food
Organic agriculture strives toward being sustainable, meaning that which can be continued indefinitely, without depletion of resources beyond a rate that they could be renewed.

Step 2 and 3: Eat Local, Seasonal Food
Eating local, seasonal food supports local farms and saves the energy that would be used to refrigerate and transport food many miles.

Step 4: Eat a Variety of Food“The loss of genetic diversity—silent, rapid, inexorable—is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction, to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine,” writes Kenny Ausubel in the book Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure. Organic farms grow a wide variety of plants to keep the soil healthy and preserve diversity. Industrial farms, on the other hand, monocrop, meaning they grow nothing but a few commodities.

Step 5: Eat Low on the Food Chain
Humans can eat both high and low on the food chain and be adequately nourished. Residues of persistent chemicals such as DDT, PCBs, dioxin, and many pesticides concentrate in animal fat.

Step 6: Eat Whole Foods with Adequate Fiber
Whole foods are nutritionally complex and complete. Refined foods have had much of their nutritional value and fiber removed.

Step 7: Avoid Processed Food
The average American eats 150 pounds of additives a year, much of which is sugar and salt. Three thousand additives are intentionally used in processed food. Many of these additives, such as hydrogenated oils, can cause health problems.

Step 8: Reduce Packaging for Public Health and the Environment
Chlorine and dioxin are just two chemical compounds that are released in the manufacture of many packaging materials. Toxic chemicals can also migrate to your food from packaging.

Adapted from The Green Kitchen Handbook, by Annie Bond and Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet.