19.9 Start Your Sustainable Future Today

As we near the end of our journey in the world of health and nutrition, let’s address how to adjust your lifestyle today to ensure better health and wellness tomorrow. Adopting sustainable practices can go a long way toward helping you achieve optimal health, while also helping to protect the health of our planet. Remember, that sustainability involves meeting present nutritional needs while preserving resources for the future. It includes agricultural practices and processes, along with the choices that consumers make when they shop for their food. Ideally, sustainable practices include methods that are healthy, conserve the environment, protect livestock, respect food industry workers, provide fair wages to farmers, and support farming communities. When a practice or a process is sustainable, it can be maintained for decades, or even centuries, to come.

Living a Sustainable Lifestyle

There are a number of steps you can take to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Utilizing an environmentally-friendly approach to good nutrition is a great way to remain and stay healthy. As an initial step, you might try to buy more whole foods rather than processed foods. You might also drink more water, rather than sodas and juices with added sugar. It is also a good idea to drink from a reusable water bottle to avoid adding more plastic to your local landfill, not to mention saving the fuel it takes to ship bottles of water. Here are some other suggestions to live a more sustainable lifestyle:

Learn more about food. Learn about your local food system, what is native to the area, what is imported or shipped in, how food moves from farms to processors to retail in your area, and what practices are used. Read labels to see where food comes from and what the growing and processing practices are. You might also try taking a cooking class to learn more about food in general.

Eat a plant-based diet. A plant-based diet is not necessarily vegetarian or vegan; it simply emphasizes whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes over meat and poultry. Plant-based foods are good sources of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals. They also help to decrease your risk for cancer and other chronic conditions.

Support local farmers. Purchase more locally grown food to promote sustainability. This could involve going to a farmer’s market or a nearby farm. Locally grown food requires less fossil fuel because it does not have to travel great distances. Locally grown food also puts money back into your community and helps farmers in your area. Shopping at a farmer’s market or a local farm may also provide an opportunity to talk to the farmer who grew the food to learn more about what you put on your plate.

Join a community garden. You can’t get more local than food that is grown in your own backyard. Consider growing your own food, or trying a community garden if you do not have the space at your home. Produce from a local garden will not only be fresher, it will often taste better. In addition, it will provide an opportunity to get to know like-minded individuals in your community.

Help spread the word. Talk to friends and family members about food, nutrition, and living a sustainable lifestyle. Also, pay attention to food and nutrition policy at the federal, state, and local levels. Take a look at what foods are available in your community. Are there supermarkets or corner stores? What is available in the university dining hall? If healthy options are lacking, can you talk to someone to bring about changes?

Changing Your Behavior

Living a sustainable lifestyle and achieving optimal health is not easy. Taking steps to exercise more, eat healthier foods, and work harder to avoid food contamination may involve making major changes in your life. However, change is a process, and researchers have long studied the various stages of that process, as well as what helps or hinders it. While creating and implementing change is not easy, the more conscious you are of the process, and the more you prepare, the greater the chances are for success. Learning about the different stages of behavioral change can help you take a proactive approach to living a sustainable lifestyle.