Happy GREEN Day!

I mean, Happy St. Patrick's Day! We certainly should honor what St. Patrick has done in Ireland for the Christian faith on this day, the day of his death. But I can't help but think about taking this "going green" thing we do on March 17th to remind ourselves of everything green. Let's all go a little greener in our lives, not just by wearing the color.

"Going green" generally means to pursue knowledge and practices that can lead to more environmentally friendly and ecologically responsible decisions and lifestyles, which can help protect the environment and sustain its natural resources for current and future generations. In nutrition, there are a couple easy things you can do. One major thing we can do is to support local farmers by purchasing their produce, meat/poultry and other food resources. You can search for Farmers Markets in our area on the USDA website. Better yet, you can even start your own produce garden and eat your own! When you do either of these, you decrease a food's carbon footprint (a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide) because that food did not require excessive amounts of fossil fuel in order to transport it to your home. At our house, we recently started a berry garden. My daughter absolutely loves strawberries and she now has her very own strawberry plant. In the process of learning how to grow the fruit, she has actively invested and taken part in the process of sustaining its life.

Another major thing you can do when it comes to nutrition is eat less processed foods. I still stand on my position that all foods fit, but when able, try and eat more foods in their natural form. Some ingredients found on a food label take entire manufacturing plants to produce. As a mom, I know the temptation of going to the canned sauces and boxed dinners, and there's nothing wrong with that when life gets crazy sometimes. However, try and reduce those types of dinners depending on how many of them you are doing right now. I see many people flocking to the boxed potatoes for the sake of ease, but did you know that boiling your own potatoes takes almost the same amount of time it takes to boil the water to make those boxed ones? And the taste of fresh mashed potatoes is no comparion to its processed counterpart.

On this St. Paddy's Day, commit to going greener and eating more unprocessed green. At the Lemond house, we need those types of reminders as well.