My big green agenda - your opinions

Caterina

I have checked the 100-mile diet concept but it is really hard for vegetarians who rely on pulses, nuts and soy products for their protein intake. Any suggestions?

Caterina

A_fiend_for_life

A tricky one if your vegetarian. Though it depends what you include in your diet as vegetarian. I found when I was vegetarian I ended up eating a lot more cheese and eggs - certainly not a good thing in terms of saturated fats and cholesterol.

Grains I understand are also quite high but the problem with protein is you have complete protein (meat and dairy) and incomplete protein (pulse, beans, grain, corn, nuts). Incomplete protein has one or more limiting amino acid. As they are incomplete you need to combine the different sources to maximise use of the protein sources. The other problem is that the body cannot store protein and converts the excess to fat.

From what I remember grain and corn combine well for complete protein so some sort of whole grain and corn bread. (I've never heard of corn being put on muesli or porridge though corn is often sweetened as a dessert in SE Asia).

Generally I found the shortest food miles were lentils from turkey and soya, possibly GM !?, grown in the uk.

An overlooked source of protein is mushrooms though again it is hard to find info on which are the best species to grow or harvest in terms of protein content. I wouldn't expect supermarket ones to be that good though.

Speculating a bit here but propagating mushrooms should be a relatively easy task of finding a suitable substrate, wind blown branches might be a good one eg shaggy ink caps, and a warm humid place for them to flourish. As they produce spores I would have thought drying them out and sprinkling them on the substrate should be sufficient.

SAMHP_2

Hi,
I know this probably flies in the face of 'money saving' but the best thing we did when trying to reduce our Eon electricity bill was to get rid (recycle) our old fridge and old freezer (which were over 10 yrs old) and buy an A++ rated all in one fridge/freezer, which cost about £200.
For two consecutive quarters we have now reduced our pre-new appliance bill by over £100 ie. we have saved what the new appliance cost us. I know it takes a big leap of faith, but old appliances can be hugely wasteful on energy consumption and this might be one area worth exploring.
SAM