Cooking Tips for Eco-Friendly and Healthy Eating

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• Tags: cooking, cooking tips, eco cooking, eco-friendly living, green cooking, Green Living, health, healthy cooking, non stick, pans, save energy, slow cooker, teflon, toaster oven

As you prepare to cook and bake lots of big holiday meals, consider these tips for making each one a little more eco-friendly.

Cook with Green Pans: If you want to call yourself an eco-friendly chef, you need to loose the Teflon pans once and for all. There are several safe and green non-stick pans available now that make Teflon unnecessary, which is a good thing. The EPA considers Teflon to be a likely carcinogen. Plus, two recent studies have linked the chemical to high cholesterol. The studies, one published in the Environmental Health Perspectives and the other published in the American Journal of Public Health, found positive associations between higher bad LDL cholesterol levels and the presence of the non-stick chemical in the blood stream.

Go Small: When you can, forgo turning on the oven, which on average accounts for 10 percent of your energy bill to cook your meal. Smaller appliances can often do the job better, using less energy. The toaster oven for example, only uses half the energy of your full size conventional oven and it works great for small meals, warming up leftovers and the obvious, toasting. Microwave ovens cook so fast that they can reduce energy use by about two-thirds. Plus, your microwave doesn’t waste energy while it pre-heats and it can’t be left on once cooking is complete. And finally, counter-top slower cookers are another eco-friendly cooking appliance. Sounds old-fashioned and slow so it must use a lot of energy, right? Wrong. Even after running for 10 hours, the slow cooker barely puts a dent in your energy bill. And usually cooking in the slow cooker is easy–just throw in fresh vegetables, meat and seasonings and wait for the magic to happen.

Serve Home-Style: Think back to what your Grandmother would have eaten. Chances are she baked and cooked fresh meals daily using whole food ingredients. Processed foods filled with artificial chemicals and preservatives were not served. So when you’re planning your meals, think, “what would Grandma do?” As much as you can, visit the farmer’s market for fresh local produce and create home-cooked meals. Not only are these foods better for the environment, but also, they’re better for you. Even better, serve up soups, stews and one-pot meals that can all be prepared, cooked and served in the same pot. This will save you from doing tons of dishes and wasting all that water and electricity.

Technorati Tags: cooking, cooking tips, eco cooking, eco-friendly living, green cooking, Green Living, health, healthy cooking, non stick, pans, save energy, slow cooker, teflon, toaster oven