You had me with the headline! Environmental Working Group's (EWG) "Good Food on a Tight Budget" shopping guide recently appeared in my inbox and I just had to share it.
Who doesn't want to save money on their grocery bill while still being able to enjoy good, healthy food?! This is such a great resource, and in great time for school and, heck, even for those of us raring our engines for the fall work rush.
Visit the website below to learn what the top 100 foods are that will help keep the "beans" in your pockets while still giving you the goods (nutrients and proteins, that is). They also highlight which organic foods are most worth the extra $$.
The site offers plenty of tips, a quick list of the top 100 foods, a menu planner, shopping list, price tracker, and a whole lot more:
Also, EWG did this all for our health. But they are not-for-profit and if you like the information you see here, they would appreciate our donations so they can keep doing this kind of great work. If you do donate, EWG will send you a hard copy of the guide so you have the food list accessible all the time - pretty great!
This past week's NOW Magazine was an issue many of us have on our plates. I actually saw the cover while standing in line at a chippy downtown. Talk about ironic.
It seems we can't escape the reality of the shrinking seafood supply and it really is time for all of us to wake up and smell the stink of our bad fishing practices.
Read Adria Vasil's article "Good Fish, Bad Fish" and learn about the various fish eco-labels out there and how they really stack up.
This past Thursday, I went to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) to meet wildlife photographer and documentary filmmaker Rob Stewart as part of a special public screening of his first movie: Sharkwater (2007). Those who know about my time spent down in South Carolina teaching environmental education and classes on sharks know how jazzed I was to have the opportunity to meet Stewart in person.
I set out for the ROM and joined a group of students from Malvern Collegiate armed with questions and a curiosity about this person who has found a way to change the way so many look at sharks.
Smart, ambitious and serious about his work, Stewart entered the theatre wearing a pair of worn desert boots and ready to dive right in and share all the knowledge he has gained from his experience as a biologist, conservationist, wildlife photographer and filmmaker.
It has been two years since Rob Stewart has been underwater with sharks. The memory of resting below water on a re-breather, letting no bubbles disturb the ocean around him as hundreds of hammerhead sharks swim in every direction, on all sides of him, is still fresh in his mind. Gaining the trust of these ancient creatures is no small feat - it takes hours of patient waiting and a fearlessnes that is no less trained than it is natural for this lover of creepy and crawly creatures.
Stewart's current project, however, has him firmly on land, trying to save humanity from itself. "The sharks are going to be fine," says Stewart, reciting their ability to survive five major extinctions and to live in the deepest, darkest trenches of the ocean. Stewart's immediate interest is shifting our focus to a bigger, more imminent dilemma: our own survival. With all that Stewart has learned over the past several years with Sharkwater, it is apparent that this is a story he needs to share with us. This project is a 3D documentary called Rise Again, which will feature several species, lots of adventure and exploration into the human practice of taking from the planet, and Stewart himself.
Pretty ambitious stuff, but Stewart seems to have caught the filmmaking bug after having pushed himself so hard while making Sharkwater, and he wants to see what he can do on a bigger stage.
When I asked him about his family, it's easy to see where his sense of drive comes from. His parents started up their own publishing business at 30, when Stewart was born, and have helped cultivate their son's appetite for wildlife with fish tanks and trips to Florida and the Caribbean. Growing up near York Mills and Bayview, Stewart was snapping underwater photos as a teenager and instructing scuba diving by 18. A couple of years at a private school and Western weren't really his bag, so he packed up and headed to a university in Kenya where he would spend summers working on photo assignments. Stewart now calls Los Angeles his home, in part because this is where he has the greatest access to funding and talent for future projects, and because he prefers being warm and on the ocean. Don't get Stewart wrong, though. He loves Toronto (especially riding bicycles and going to Muskoka). He just likes it a lot better in the summer.
As Stewart redirects his focus from sharks to humans, he still sits on many boards to help with the conservation effort and is proud of the accomplishments his first documentary has achieved. The film has helped change government policy in four countries and the number of countries that have banned finning grew from 26 pre- to 85 post-launch. Still, Stewart points out, "The greatest amount of sharks caught on record was in 2009 after we already knew their populations had dropped 90 per cent."
For the time being, Stewart is busy promoting a new Disney film called Oceans, which is due out for release on April 22 (Earth Day, or as he prefers to call it, Life Day). I'm definitely going to see this documentary, which apparently took a fair while to make and has some amazing underwater footage.
If you're concerned about sharks, or about what you can do to live a little more consciously, here are some sites Stewart shared with us:
Traveling the world to discover where the seafood on your dinner plate really comes from is not par for many people's course, but with Bottomfeeder in hand, you don't have to go far afield to learn why bottomfeeding is the way to eat.
Author Taras Grescoe takes readers from the oyster-wasteland of Chesapeake Bay to antibiotic-laden shrimp farms in India's "protected" mangrove forests that empty into the Bay of Bengal while expertly reporting on the condition of the fish and shellfish we love to eat and how humans are pushing these populations to their brink.
Pages of plenty: When it comes down to it, I really enjoyed Grescoe's book about the world of seafood. His fondness for fish (well, he was a pescavore and is now a self-proclaimed "bottomfeeder") and research into fisheries and seafood cuisine is impressive (who knew that when Julia Child introduced the monkfish to America, the goblin-faced fish went from fashionable to near collapse?). Chapters are made into regions around the world and are brought to life with scenes of fishing life and the species in their sometimes uninhabitable homes. Bottomfeeder reads like traveler's literature spiked with knowledge of a deep problem that must be solved. I was saved near the end of this book, wrestling with a sinking feeling about the enormity of the problems with most fishing practices, when Grescoe provides us with the necessary tools for selecting seafood that is best to eat and questions to ask the local fishmonger when picking out your next meal.
About the author: Taras Grescoe is no amateur writer, having works published in The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Gourmet, The Globe and Mail and The Times (UK), to name a few. Ahem. He has written three other books, Sacre Blues, The End of Elsewhere, and The Devil's Picnic, whose titles alone are delightful. If you're already hooked, visit his site: www.tarasgrescoe.com, to find out more about Grescoe and how to choose "sustainable" seafood.
www.seachoice.org (Sustainable Seafood Canada) and www.msc.org (Marine Stewardship Council) are good sites to begin your search for seafood to eat and those fish to avoid.
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