Eat To Live: Now, the low-carbon diet

WASHINGTON, April 6 (UPI) -- Students and office workers, you'd better brush up your math skills. On top of counting calories, you can now calculate how much what you're eating is adding in carbon cost.

It's a new take on "carbs," only this time we're talking the damage you may be doing not to your body but to the globe.

In another possible confusion, Bon Appetit is the company behind it. And it's not the gourmet food magazine. It's a management company that runs cafeterias for corporations and university campuses, operating with the rubric, "Food services for a sustainable future."

From May, Bon Appetit, which runs more than 400 cafes in 28 states, will be testing a "low carb diet" that will allow cafeteria diners to choose between, say, a banana that has reached the fruit bowl having been flown in from many greenhouse gas-creating miles away and a locally grown apple.

It's not just flyer-miles that adversely affect the environment. Processing, production and packaging may also contribute as much as a third of greenhouse-gas emissions annually. So even choices related to ready-made food purchases can have an impact on climate change.

Bon Appetit is not a newcomer to raising awareness over food choices. Last month, the company followed up its ban on the use of poultry raised with antibiotics in their diet with one to cover the beef it buys.

This means the ground meat that goes into the nearly 100,000 hamburgers it serves each month in its cafeterias will come from suppliers who don't add growth hormones, use antibiotics or feed their animals with animal byproducts. And the animals must be raised humanely.

Over the next month, Eat To Live will be reporting on nutrition and health from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

According to the Tufts Climate Initiative, flying to Europe from the United States alone will cause more emissions than 20 Bangladeshis will set off in a whole year. And these are the unfortunate people whose low-lying houses will disappear when sea levels rise.

The average American is responsible for roughly 20 tons of CO2 emissions annually. The average European and Japanese creates half that amount.

It's not possible to cycle to Indochina. But by buying carbon offsets with every plane trip, frequent flyers and others can pay someone else to lower their own emissions in their stead.

The Center for Sustainable Innovation in Vermont has produced what it calls a Global Warming Footprint, for use by businesses. This is a spreadsheet, accessible to the general public, that measures the sustainability of an organization's CO2 emissions and evaluates its ecological impact.

But for individuals, there are companies that will plant a tree to offset the impact of short or long-haul flights. In the case of Britain's Flying Forests (www.flyingforest.org), for instance, the trees are planted somewhere in Southern Africa. So not only do they go some way to help neutralize your carbon emissions, but the local people, habitat and wildlife benefit, too.

Meanwhile, if you consider where the food you're eating comes from, you'll realize that buying locally also amounts to buying seasonally. Because it hasn't been forced out of its natural cycle, it will have the added advantage of tasting a good deal better.

In the farmers' markets that are beginning to open are bundles of broccolini spears and bunches of pink-stemmed chard. For a low-carb meal in both its meanings, take either, throw them into fiercely boiling salted water and as soon as their stems can take the point of a knife, drain them and dress them either with melted butter, salt and freshly ground pepper, or a mustardy vinaigrette, and eat at once. The dish will taste so much better than asparagus that has to come from miles away because it isn't yet in season.

Eat the chard or broccolini with lamb chops marinaded for a couple of hours in olive oil, the juice of a lemon and a handful of fresh thyme leaves. Then grill them both sides on a ridged grill pan that has been heated until it smokes. Make a mound of the broccolini or the chard on each person's plate, set a couple of chops alongside, and crumble over some feta cheese and a sprinkling of finely chopped fresh mint leaves.

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E-mail: Consumerhealth@upi.com