Sponsored by
Live green, and, above all else, eat your greens
The theme for this year's Green Festival, which finishes on Sunday, has been 'grow it, cook it, eat it'. At the start of the festival, we revealed that there was a lack of knowledge in the Peterborough area about how to eat healthily and how to get hold of local food.
The theme for this year's Green Festival, which finishes on Sunday, has been 'grow it, cook it, eat it'. At the start of the festival, we revealed that there was a lack of knowledge in the Peterborough area about how to eat healthily and how to get hold of local food.So the ET, together with Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT), challenged three families or individuals who felt they needed to make some changes to their diets to use the festival as a catalyst. We supplied them with organic vegetable boxes, courtesy of Riverford Organic Vegetables at Sacrewell Farm, who also gave them some recipes, and asked them to embrace fresh, seasonal vegetables. Here is how they got on.
Related feature:
Green Festival 2009: Green Travel: Cycling really is the wheel deal.
-------------------
Tayloring their diet for a healthier, greener lifestyle
Although the Taylor family from Woodston eat a fairly balanced diet, mum Lisa had become concerned they'd got stuck in a rut.
They ate meat with every meal and tended to end up with "meat and two veg-style" combinations.
Her son Jack (7), did eat vegetables, but tended to stick to a set of staples, including carrots, sweetcorn and peas. He would only eat broccoli when he wasn't at home.
So the Riverford box was a real chance to experiment and try out new recipes.
Lisa's first meal of courgettes and organic mushrooms stuffed with roasted potato, carrot, wet garlic and cheese was such a success that on day one, husband Matt (32) agreed to go veggie once a week.
She said: "I didn't say I was going to make something without meat and after he'd eaten it I said 'can we go veggie once a week?' and he said 'if it tastes like that, yes'."
The project also saw some success with young Jack.
"I didn't think that he would try asparagus, and he did and he loved it. I think that's good as well, to encourage new things. If he finds out he does like it, he's more likely to try other things," Lisa (39) said.
Nicola's discovering variety of eating what's in season
HAVING lived in New Zealand for two years, 25-year-old Nicola Winstone has returned to the UK determined to embrace some of our Kiwi cousins' healthy eating habits.
"Generally I'm quite healthy but having lived in New Zealand, what really impressed me there was that they really care about seasonality, and the bonus of that is it's much cheaper.
"That's not something we really do in the UK," she said.
Nicola, who is currently waiting to start work as an English language tutor, said that in New Zealand, markets are big suppliers of food, and these sell seasonal, and often local produce.
Supermarkets also sell fruit and vegetables, and do have constant supplies of the same things, but their prices change to reflect the seasons. For example, in the right season, Nicola would have expected to pay 50 cents for an avocado. Out of season, this price would have gone up to four dollars and 50 cents.
Before she went to New Zealand, eating seasonal vegetables was not a priority for Nicola.
"I would just go to the supermarket, and I would often eat stirfries and eat Chinese vegetables, which we don't grow in England, not very well anyway," she said.
But living abroad changed all that.
"I love the fact that by eating something in season, you're gaining the best nutrients from these foods because we're meant to eat what is in season," she said.
PECT's project was the perfect opportunity for Nicola to embrace this sort of lifestyle back home.
After taking delivery of the veg box, complete with recipes, Nicola began to experiment with foods she wouldn't normally use, including a butternut squash. She also used wet garlic, and aubergine, which she served with fish, when traditionally she would have just had potatoes.
Nicola said: "My concern about the boxes was that I would be left with vegetables at the end of it and it wouldn't be value for money, but what it does is it helps you think of more imaginative food ideas."Busy Duncan finds that eating well involves a bit of planning
A BUSY life travelling up and down the A1 has taken its toll on Duncan Russell's eating habits.
The 45-year-old, director of hydrogeology for Royal Haskoning, works in Peterborough, but goes back at weekends to be with his family in Newcastle.
"You find yourself on the A1 on a Friday evening, and it's quite hard to resist popping in for some junk food," he said.
Even in Peterborough during the week, his high-powered job leaves little time for preparing healthy meals, and he eats a lot of microwave meals.
"I think eating healthily is a least in part down to good planning," he said. "When time is tight, planning is the thing that probably suffers so you grab whatever you can."
But recently he became aware that something needed to change.
"I just think I'm not fit enough. I carry a few extra pounds and that makes you feel tired," he said. "I'm looking forward to shedding a few pounds and having a lot more energy."
Duncan found his veg box very tasty, and cooked up some good creations at the weekend.
Unfortunately, he still found that he was too busy in the week to use it.
"During the week the box just sat in the fridge and then I used it at the weekend," he said.
However, he does intend to make some changes to his life.
"I think the answer is to try and plan ahead a little bit, to carve out some time to plan for eating healthily," he said.
Although Duncan has decided to make some changes and this has coincided with the Green Festival, he is open about the fact that his motivation was personal rather than environmental. But he makes the point that the two are often linked.
"I didn't suddenly wake up and think 'I've got to go green'. The thought process was 'I'm getting more and more tired, how can I redress that balance, and do something that's going to make me feel better in the long run?'," he said.
"But what's truly better for us tends to be better for other people and the environment as well."
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Peterborough
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: West
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.