The Neurotic Eater’s Grocery List
The ethical, environmental, and health problems of virtually every food in the supermarket.
Photograph byBobby DohertyFood styling byVictoria Granof
Can’t remember just what’s so bad about eating shrimp? Concerned about consuming the least environmentally ruinous things possible but can’t keep it all straight? Not sure what that “organic” label really means? Below, a guide to what’s morally squishy about so much of our food supply — and practical tips about how to make more informed, socially conscious choices about what you put in your mouth.
Aisle 1
Dairy
The scariest stuff: cruelty (dairy farms aren’t in the business of slaughtering animals, but that doesn’t mean they’re any more humane than meat farms), global warming (those cow farts are just as bad from milk cows), and tons of additives and chemicals slipped into milk from other species we’ve been trained to see as “natural.”
CHEESE
Cheese is a cow-fart global-warming A-bomb. It all comes back to cow farts: The methane they release has a global-warming impact 25 times higher than carbon. Given that a single pound of hard cheese requires 10 pounds of milk, on average, to produce, it adds up to a lot of methane per calorie. (Butter is even worse; a pound of it requires 21 pounds of milk, on average.)
WHAT TO BUY: If you’re concerned about the environmental impact, choose the varieties with less fat and less density: ricotta, mozzarella, and especially cottage cheese (the lower density means fewer cow farts per calorie). If animal treatment is what you’re freaking out about, look for the Animal Welfare Approved or Certified Humane labels. And for health reasons, keep an eye on the ingredient list, because many processed cheeses contain artificial coloring.
EGGS
Eggs farms are true hell. If there’s any fate worse than death, it’s living at an egg farm. Most hens are kept in cages with only about 70 square inches of space — causing their muscles to atrophy and their bones to go brittle. Rows, each holding hens by the hundreds, are often stacked four or five high; the feces and urine smells are nauseating; and birds die frequently, some from dehydration. Male chicks, meanwhile, deplete precious feed, so several disposal methods exist for them, such as snapping their necks, gassing them with carbon dioxide, feeding them live into a grinder, or (though it’s frowned upon) even suffocating them in bags. (The American Veterinary Medical Association recommends farmers invest in a good industrial-strength macerator, which is horrifying.)
WHAT TO BUY: For reasons environmental, ethical, and nutritional, you want the pastured kind, from hens that spend their whole lives outdoors, eating natural diets (think bugs and grass). But there’s no official definition of “pastured,” so you’ll have to do your homework. If you can’t buy directly from local farmers, consult the Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit based in Wisconsin that does agricultural investigation and promotes small-scale farming. Its Organic Egg Scorecard ranks brands by the space allotted to each bird, the farm’s mortality rate, litter-management practices, and a host of other criteria. The company Vital Farms works with a series of small farms to make truly pastured eggs available across the country, and its website has an interactive map to help locate their various brands in specific stores. (The Washington Postreports that a Vital Farms laying hen spends most of the day outdoors and is allotted 108 square feet of outdoor space.) As a fallback, look for brands with the labels Certified Humane or Animal Welfare Approved. And if none of these are available, at least opt for the eggs with the most omega-3s, which come from chickens with healthier diets. And all things being equal, organic is at least marginally better than nonorganic.
ICE CREAM
There’s listeria in your ice cream. Huge listeria recalls cost Blue Bell (one of the country’s largest brands) and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams (a higher-end artisan) big this year. A top official at the Centers for Disease Control described those companywide recalls as a “wakeup call” to ice-cream-makers, but in truth bacteria appear to have gotten more prevalent everywhere lately. Roughly one in every six Americans now gets food poisoning every year; listeria and E. coli alone triggered recalls for Sabra hummus, alfalfa sprouts, and bagged spinach since 2015.
Also, in addition to artificial dyes, ice cream is often made with synthetic emulsifiers, which make ice cream smoother. Research has shown that they might interfere with intestinal microbes and contribute to “metabolic syndrome,” which is linked to obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
WHAT TO BUY: The best way to avoid listeria is just to keep your ears open for product recalls, and if you’re elderly or have a weak immune system, limit your intake of the high-risk products. As for sustainability, a few brands noted for their ecofriendliness are Luna & Larry’s Organic Coconut Bliss, Ben & Jerry’s, So Delicious, and Laloo’s Goat Milk Ice Cream. (It’s best to aim for a short ingredient list, too.)
MILK
Milk cows are fed blood and stand in their own feces: Industrial dairy farms are basically gulags. The little calves are often taken from their mothers when they’re just a day old (and fed milk substitutes that include cattle blood so the mothers’ milk can be sold to humans). Some spend their entire lives standing on concrete floors; others have to wade through their own feces. They have a natural lifespan of 20 years, but they’re often slaughtered at age 4 or 5 because of the diseases and reproductive problems they acquire at factory farms. Most will be lucky to squeeze in three lactations before they become an economic drag on the farm and get sold as low-quality burger meat. But though mammary infections andserious infertility problems are on the rise, Big Dairy has succeeded anyway in nearly doubling per-cow milk output since 1980. Last year, the average hit a record-high 22,393 pounds per cow. Output is absurdly higher in some — as much as 75,000 pounds.
WHAT TO BUY: If you must get it from the supermarket, look for stamps saying Animal Welfare Approved or Certified Humane. It’s better to have the USDA Organic label than to not have it, because that tells you the cows weren’t given growth hormones or antibiotics — but don’t think that certification alone ensures a thoroughly organic product.
The packaging also matters: the most sustainable choice is glass, if you can manage to reuse it. With glass, you’ll also avoid concerns about chemicals like BPA leaching into the product.
You might try some alternatives, but most aren’t much better. Hemp milk might be the best choice all around. It has the lowest environmental impact — because it requires almost no herbicide or pesticide, suppresses weeds, and doesn’t need much watering. It’s rich in healthy fats, and it avoids those concerns about estrogen, genetic modification, and excessive sugar.
PARMESAN
Parmesan is filled with wood chips: Probably any pre-grated cheese will contain cellulose, which is extracted from wood—the FDA allows it as an additive to prevent clumping. It’s not as scary as it sounds; cellulose is found in fruits and vegetables too, and it usually passes through your body without being absorbed. But an investigation from Bloomberg Newsrecently found that some companies were flouting the oft-cited guideline that cellulose should constitute 2 to 4 percent of a given product; the variety from Jewel-Osco was 8.8 percent cellulose, and the Wal-Mart brand was 7.8 percent. The worst known offender is the Market Pantry brand, sold at Target, which in 2012 was found to be producing “100 percent Parmesan cheese” that contained no actual Parmesan.
WHAT TO BUY: To skip this kind of filler, just buy a block of Parmesan cheese and grate it yourself, or buy it from a small shop that grates it onsite. And for what it’s worth, the processed variety from Whole Foods’ house brand only tested at 0.3 percent in Bloomberg’s analysis — though the label doesn’t list it as an ingredient at all.
Aisle 2
Seafood
The main things to freak out about with seafood are fish fraud (fishmongers are lying as much as 87 percent of the time, depending on the “fish”); overfishing (which screws with delicate ecosystems, made even more delicate by acidity from global warming, and could even bring about extinctions); by-catch issues (catching that one tuna probably killed lots of other fish); and contamination (from actually toxic chemicals, among other things).
But there are some broad principles that should help you navigate all that. First, buy local — from community-supported fisheries, if possible. If you can’t, at least look for products that come from the U.S., not overseas (this also cuts down on fossil-fuel effects of shipping). Pregnant women and children should stick to smaller fish (think flounder and haddock instead of marlin and tuna) that haven’t had time to accumulate high levels ofmercury, which can impair development in children’s nervous systems. Otherwise, for help with specifics, consult the rating program of the Safina Center, a nonprofit conservation group based at Stony Brook University on Long Island. Its ratings detail risks of overfishing, catch methods, mercury levels, and other issues for hundreds of different fish species. Or visit theMonterey Bay Aquarium website for a helpful app, wallet insert, and search tool. Once you select your state, it will give you a list of the most ocean-friendly choices, another list of decent alternatives, and a third list of fish to avoid.
Both wild-caught fish and the farm-raised kind have their advantages, and the better choice often depends on the species. Some experts recommend eating a mix of both. Rainbow trout, arctic char, and oysters are often farmed in a sustainable way and are healthy to boot. Some healthy wild-caught varieties are Pacific sardines and Alaskan salmon and mackerel.
CAVIAR
Caviar comes out via forced gynecological surgery. To get a fish’s eggs, workers rip out its ovaries or perform a C-section, then sew it back up so they can repeat the procedure again and again, according to PETA. Not to mention that industrialized aquaculture farms are often filthy and overcrowded places where the fish swim through their own shit and pick up parasites.
WHAT TO BUY: If you can empathize with a fish, best not to eat their babies — like at all. (Though the European appetite for ethically harvested caviar was enough for at least one company to start to “milk” or “massage” the eggs out of sturgeon, rather than cutting them open.)
CRAB CAKE
Crab cake is mystery meat. Maryland blue crab is sustainably harvested, but what’s called that is not always from Maryland. One study found that 38 percent of “Maryland crab cakes” contained imported crabmeat from places like Indonesia and Thailand, which means they rode here on a jet after being raised in who knows what kind of environment.
WHAT TO BUY: It’s nearly impossible to know exactly where your crabmeat comes from, but the state of Maryland launched an initiative to certify restaurants and sellers who use true Maryland blue crab.
LOBSTERS
Lobsters feel pain in the pot. As David Foster Wallace memorably noted, they do have an “exquisite tactile sense,” meaning they can feel pain. It’s probably why they frantically claw at the edges of the pot while the water heats up.
WHAT TO BUY: In order to humanely kill a live lobster, Saveurrecommends chilling the crustacean in a freezer to “relax and numb it,” before slicing through its head behind the eyes. But animal activists claim there is no way to kill a lobster humanely. And once you’ve considered the lobster’s pain, you should also probably consider pain felt by crabs and octopuses, because researchers have concluded that all of these animals’ responses to trauma are not reflexes but reactions to genuine pain.
SALMON
Salmon are drug addicts. Tissue in juvenile chinook caught in the Puget Sound recentlytested positive for Prozac, Lipitor, Benadryl, Advil, and cocaine. The ones raised in farms may have it even worse, since a ton of wild-caught fish ends up as feed on industrial-scale farms — over half the planet’s fish oil, for instance, is now used by salmon farms.
Salmon is also at the forefront of GMO seafood: The FDA just approvedAquAdvantage, a lab-made salmon species that will be the first genetically modified meat or seafood to market. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, andCostco have pledged not to sell it, but there are no plans to identify it as GM for whoever does. Besides concerns over its status as a living, breathing GMO, there are also fears the fish, which grows huge fast, could escape into the wild. The producer says that’s unlikely, but that it’s implemented “several layers” of safeguards just in case.
WHAT TO BUY: Try to get it from a trusted source — and good luck with that!
SCALLOPS
Scallops try to escape. They can perceive danger, and imminent pain, enough to swim away from predators by flapping their shells.
WHAT TO BUY: If that image freaks you out, there’s nothing we can do to help you.
CLAMS
Clams cower in fear. They’ve learned to escape clam diggers by burying themselves in the sand.
WHAT TO BUY: What can you say?
OYSTERS
Oysters don’t want to die. They protect themselves by snapping their shells closed.
WHAT TO BUY: If you care what a shellfish is trying to tell you, this one is telling you, “Don’t you eat me.”
OCTOPUS
Octopuses are geniuses. Some weirdos even think they deserve to be considered more intelligent than humans. And when you see one navigating a maze, for instance, it’s hard not to argue they’re at least the rival of a chimp.
WHAT TO BUY: Nothing, unless you like the idea of eating the closest humans are likely ever to get to an encounter with an alien intelligence.
SNAPPER
They’ll call anything snapper. In 2013, researchers found 87 percent of red snapper was mislabeled. Which isn’t so surprising, since up to 90 percent of the country’s seafood is imported and fraud is rampant; fully one-third of seafood available in the U.S. is mislabeled.
WHAT TO BUY: Whenever possible, buy the entire fish—that’s the best way to know what you’re eating. And never buy fish that’s priced far belowmarket value. Also, find purveyors through the National Fisheries Institute’s Better Seafood Board. The prime choice is diver-caught snapper from the Gulf of Mexico. If you don’t have time for afternoon spearfishing off the coast of Naples, look for hook or hand-line snapper from Hawaii and steer clear of any snapper from Brazil.
SHRIMP
Slaves harvested your shrimp. Thailand’s human-trafficking industry is now responsible for producing an enormous share of the world’s shrimp. Factories there essentially hold hostage undocumented workers from Cambodia and Burma, forcing them to spend their days peeling shrimp in humid, stinking sheds. An Associated Pressinvestigation last year spotlighted one couple who peeled about 175 pounds for just $4 a day and, after paying “cleaning fees” and buying their gloves and boots, had almost nothing left. The final product is sold to the U.S. via a loophole in federal law; as of December, shrimp from supply chains tainted by forced labor was sold in all 50 states.
Then there’s the hazard shrimp pose to your joints. A Dickens character said that gout “arises from too much ease and comfort” — but it also arises from eating shrimp and lobster.
WHAT TO BUY: Opt for shrimp that comes from the U.S. — usually along the Gulf Coast or in Alaska — even if it means paying a little extra. (Up to 90 percent of shrimp sold in this country is imported.) And with all fish and shellfish products, look for certification from the Aquaculture Stewardship Council or the Marine Stewardship Council to be sure it’s caught or fished responsibly.
TILAPIA
Prison inmates harvest tilapia. Whole Foods recently stopped selling tilapia sourced froma private prison in Colorado where inmates earn a maximum of $1.50 an hour. Which is $1.50 more an hour than what inmates on fish farms in Texas and Georgia make.
WHAT TO BUY: If your concern is prison labor exploitation, you’ve got more to worry about than tilapia. Prisoners around the country process meat, staff call centers, and stitch lingerie. You’re pretty safe buying most other tilapia, whether it’s farmed in raceways in Peru, ponds in China, or tanks in the United States.
BASS
Bass are actually okay — for the moment.Atlantic striped bass is bountiful at the moment, so you’re not contributing to overfishing if you buy net-caught bass, for now. However, certain types of nets ensnare more by-catch (sea turtles, sharks, gulls) than others.
WHAT TO BUY: Because of by-catch issues, the very best option is striped or largemouth bass farmed in ponds or aquaculture in the United States.
If you’re looking for information on Chilean sea bass, you might be surprised to learn that you’re actually looking for information on Patagonian toothfish.
CHILEAN SEA BASS
“Chilean sea bass” got a makeover, and it worked too well. Chilean sea bass is aconcept invented by marketers to make Patagonian toothfish sound refined yet accessible. The concept worked. Patagonian toothfish stocks, abundant 20 years ago, are frighteningly close to depletion. Their scarcity has meant government-enforced quotas, skyrocketing prices, illegal fishing, and rampant fraud.
WHAT TO BUY: Don’t buy toothfish from Chile. Instead, look for sea bass from fisheries in the Falkland Islands, Macquarie Island, or the Heard and McDonald Islands. Always make sure the Marine Stewardship Council has certified it. Also, you can always try an alternative like sablefish.
COD
Cod travel too far. Caught in cold water around the globe, from Newfoundland to the Sea of Okhotsk, you should avoid most cod to avoid the global-warming effects of long-distance shipping.
WHAT TO BUY: Look for Pacific cod caught in Alaska (not Japan, where there is most certainly overfishing, or Russia, where who knows?) or Atlantic cod farmed in closed tanks. Cod from Alaska is fine even if it was caught using a bottom trawl or long-line. But wild Atlantic cod from the Georges Bank, off Cape Cod, is especially good if it was caught by hand-line and certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.
MAHIMAHI
Mahimahi are the James Dean of the sea.They grow fast and die young, so they’re less susceptible than other species to overfishing concerns. Ideally, you want the kind from here in the U.S. And it’s best if they’re pole-caught or troll-caught, because these methods tend to snare fewer innocent bystander fish.
WHAT TO BUY: Most dolphinfish (mahimahi) consumed in the United States is imported, and when it comes from places like Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Peru, where large fisheries use long-line fishing techniques in shared waters, it comes at a cost: hammerhead sharks, sea turtles, and albatrosses. Buy from U.S. Atlantic fisheries whenever possible, but U.S. Pacific and Ecuador are good backups.
CATFISH
Catfish grow up on a diet of pollution. Some of the what’s commonly labeled “catfish” aretechnically basa or swai, imported from Vietnam, where some say they’re raised in polluted water. If it’s truly catfish, both the farmed and wild-caught varieties can be environmentally friendly, and, as“opportunistic and generalist predators,” there’s presently no concern about eating too many of them. The domestically farmed variety, raised in closed ponds and fed a mostly vegetarian diet, are among the most sustainable kind of fish out there.
WHAT TO BUY: Just check the label to see where it came from.
HALIBUT
Halibut is super-scarce. Atlantic halibut, which once abounded in the Gulf of Maine, has become badly overfished, which means the one that reaches your plate is probably from California or the Pacific. Depending on where you’re eating, that’s still a jet haul, but, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, still within the realm of acceptability. Just be advised that the mercury level is high, especially if it comes from California.
WHAT TO BUY: Try to avoid it if you’re on the East Coast, and limit your consumption even in the West.
POLLOCK
Pollock is … possibly the best thing the fast-food industry serves. It’s used in the Baja Fish Tacos at Long John Silver’s, the Arby’sClassic Fish Sandwich, and the McDonald’sFilet-O-Fish. It also shows up in fish sticks and other processed foods. And it’s actually not that bad for you or the Earth.
WHAT TO BUY: Any kind, really! As for nutrition: It’s low in mercury, lean, and rich in healthy fats. Just avoid the deep-fried variety.
TROUT
Trout is full of medieval-sounding diseases.Overcrowding is a serious problem on trout farms (27 can end up sharing an area the size of a bathtub), as are all the usual concerns: injuries, unnatural diets, chemicals, and illnesses like a condition called “death crown” caused by lice that burrow bone-deep into fishes’ faces.
WHAT TO BUY: You can’t go wrong buying lake trout caught with gillnets or traps in the Great Lakes.
TUNA
A dolphin died for your tuna-fish sandwich.Bluefin stocks have dropped by more than 97 percent. The majority of bluefin caught globally goes to Japan, and despite calls to boycott it from just about every conservation group in the world, some high-end restaurants in the U.S. continue to serve it. Also, tuna nets still kill dolphins, despite that petition you signed in third grade.
WHAT TO BUY: Albacore, skipjack, and yellowfin fished from the Pacific are generally good options, depending on how and where they were caught. Ideally, you should go for pole or “troll” caught variety, which is nearly zero by-catch and is lower on mercury, but is also more expensive.
ORANGE ROUGHY
We ate orange roughy basically out of existence. Since gaining popularity in the ’80s, stocks of orange have been obliterated. Though this cartoonish-looking fish has an extremely long lifespan (reportedly, some have lived to be 149), it doesn’t start reproducing until it’s at least 20 years old, which makes efforts to replenish stocks extremely challenging. Furthermore, methods used to catch orange roughy, a deep-water fish, nets a ton of by-catch.
WHAT TO BUY: Not a lot of great options out there
Aisle 3
Meat
Meat is an all-you-can-eat panic buffet: horrifying animal cruelty, massive environmental effects, health hazards left and right. How do you navigate it? First, choose whether to eat meat. If you do, consider two courses of action. Eat less of it — especially red meat, which is the worst for you and for the planet. (In 2015, an American on average ate 105 pounds of red meat, 12 pounds less than a decade ago but still astonishingly high.) And choose your meat carefully. Two labels you can trust are Animal Welfare Approved (which is associated with the highest standards of any third-party auditing program, according to the Humane Society of the United States) and Certified Humane. Use the Environmental Working Group’smeat eater’s guide for more help with labels and certifications. Of course, the best way to know whether your meal was raised ethically is to know the farmer — you can use Eatwild’s handy map to find farms in your state that meet fairly high production standards.
BACON
Bacon can give you bowel cancer. Last year, the World Health Organization declaredprocessed meats Group 1 carcinogens, placing them in the same scientific-certainty category as cigarettes and diesel car exhaust. Eating just two slices of bacon a day, it said, can up your odds of bowel cancer by 18 percent. The threat goes beyond lunchmeat, too: Any red meat (steaks, pork loins, burgers) is now in the same carcinogen class as gasoline, at minimum. Bacon is also likely to be full of nitrosamines, whichtrigger a reaction in your body that can cause DNA damage. Some researchers hypothesize that the resulting cellular changes cause Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes.
WHAT TO BUY: The National Cancer Institute recommends keeping bacon (and any other meat) away from an open flame, reducing cooking times, removing charred bits, and using the microwave whenever possible.
BEEF
However bad you imagine beef is — it’s worse. And it’s unlikely to join the antibiotic-free craze anytime soon, largely because ranchers have little incentive. The price of conventional meat is already at historic highs, and cows generally live a year or more before slaughter (versus six weeks for chickens), which is plenty of time to get illnesses requiring medication. All-natural beef can sell for as much as 80 percent more per pound, but it involves higher overhead costs and expensive audits that many suppliers don’t think are worth it.
The rising cost of ground beef has meant an increased demand for “lean finely textured beef,” more commonly known as “pink slime.” The Pepto-Bismol-colored paste, made from pulverized beef trimmings, suffered publicity woes in 2012 when pictures of the product oozing out of a machine circulated on the internet. A few months later, demand for the product had plummeted. But just two years later, as the cost of beef began to rise, producers say retailers are back to buying pink slime.
Then there’s the environmental cost. You would do better to reduce your carbon footprint by going vegetarian than by going car-free: More than 10 pounds of feed and eight gallons of water are needed for every pound of beef, according to one industry estimate. As a result, almost a third of the world’s arable land is now devoted to raising animal feed — and getting to this point meant tearing down many thousands of acres of forests, which has cost a lot of biodiversity. And even traditional grass-grazing results in massive release of methane-bearing cow farts into the atmosphere. About 20 percent of overall U.S. methane emissions, by one estimate, are the product of livestock farming.
WHAT TO BUY: Buying local will cut down on fossil fuels but, unfortunately, beef from farmers’ markets pollutes just as much as beef from major producers, if not more. The inefficiency of pasture-raised meat production allows even more time for the animals to eat, drink, poop, and burp. The best way to reduce your carbon footprint is to eat less.
CHICKEN
Chickens are pumped up with more drugs than an ’80s Soviet Olympian. Producers have spent years pumping the 9 billion birds they raise annually full of drugs that act like bird Miracle-Gro, causing today’s chickens to reach twice the size in half the time they did 50 years ago. (Breast meat alone is now heavier than the whole chicken used to be.) These fast-growth broilers live rotten lives, and their meat can taste knotty thanks to a defect called “woody breast,” or hemorrhage and cause a discoloration called “green muscle disease.”
Also, there are the human-employee issues. Tyson Foods is the largest chicken producer in the country and, as Christopher Leonard wrote in his book The Meat Racket, pioneered a system that “keeps farmers in a state of indebted servitude, living like modern-day sharecroppers on the ragged edge of bankruptcy.” Tyson Foods’ alleged exploitation doesn’t end there. A recent report by Oxfam America accused the company of routinely denying factory workers basic rights like bathroom breaks. Many employees had resorted to wearing diapers. And it’s not just Tyson — the report called out labor violations at Perdue Farms, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Sanderson Farms.
WHAT TO BUY: Chicken labels can be helpful, but they can also be misleading. To start, the “natural” label is all but useless as it only indicates that meat hasn’t been processed or treated with artificial flavors. “Free range” or “free roaming” chickens “must demonstrate to the [USDA] that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.” Which sounds reasonable, but “access to the outside” covers both chickens roaming wide-open pastures and chickens gazing at a ray of light streaming through a door. If you want your chicken to have actually felt a cool breeze on its beak, look for the “pasture raised” label, which, not yet a legal term, means the chicken was free to forage during the day while being cooped at night. The “organic” label is given to chickens that were raised completely hormone-free, feeding on 100 percent organic diets. While there are no guarantees “organic” birds are raised on a pasture, the requirement that they be antibiotic-free means farmers are unlikely to coop them in tight quarters. The only surefire way to make sense of all the labels, and what they mean to each producer, is to ask questions and do your own research.
FOIE GRAS
Foie gras is what happens when you waterboard a bird with grain. This is about as bad as it gets. To produce foie that lives up to the name (“fatty liver” in French), workers shove pipes down the throats of geese and ducks twice each day, force-feeding them up to two pounds of grain at a time. PETA reports that many of the birds ultimately have trouble standing because their abdomens swell so large. They’re confined to tight spaces, and it’s not uncommon for them to suffer from infections, diarrhea, heat stress, and lesions. And because only male ducks are useful to the foie gras industry, female ducklings are typically thrown into industrial grinders and used for fertilizer or cat food. Newsweek hasreported that as many as 40 million ducklings a year suffer this fate.
WHAT TO BUY: Come on.
HOT DOGS
2 percent of hot dogs contain human DNA.And two-thirds of the contaminated dogs were “vegetarian products.”
WHAT TO BUY: Look for nitrate-free dogs made from grass-fed beef and pasture-raised pork.
LAMB
Lamb has the largest carbon footprint of any food. Putting a single kilogram on your plate results in the same amount of carbon emission as driving a car 90 miles. That’s partially because 50 percent of lamb in the U.S. is imported, partially because of the animal’s digestion problems (lambs burp and fart a lot, which releases methane), and partially because of manure management and other farm operations.
WHAT TO BUY: Buying local is great, but if you really want to cut down on your carbon footprint, don’t eat so much red meat.
PORK
Contrary to myth, pigs don’t love standing in all that shit. Caged pigs are deprived of light nearly 24/7 to keep them calm. They also suffer the stench of ammonia from their manure and foot injuries from standing on a grid floor all day. Boars are castrated because male hormones allegedly affect the smell of the meat. The trip to the slaughterhouse is traumatic. Pigs are fairly intelligent, so they panic when transported for the first time and can get pretty sick as a result.
In addition, most cold cuts — ham, bologna, salami, pastrami — will fill you with sodium, which drives up your blood pressure and can even hinder erections. (It’s because high blood pressure and cholesterol inhibits blood flow through your arteries, including those below the belt.) The American Heart Association reports that six thin slices of cold cuts can contain as much as half your recommended daily sodium intake.
WHAT TO BUY: Finding a pig reared outside the pork industrial complex isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible. Farmers’ markets and boutique butchers are good; grocery stores are slowly beginning to indulge the demand for ethically produced pork. The USDA requires pork labeled as “pasture raised” or “free roaming” to come from pigs that have spent at least 50 percent of their lives outdoors. Such labels are preferable to “humane,” which means the pigs weren’t confined to a tiny box but given room to stand and, perhaps, stroll. Don’t be fooled by “hormone-free” labels — injecting hormones in pigs is illegal — but lately some small producers have started assuring consumers their pigs are free of ractopamine, a sort of adrenaline booster for pigs, which is legal in the U.S. but hasn’t been approved in the European Union, China, or Russia.
And instead of buying pre-sliced cold cuts, the safest bet is to prepare the meat yourself, eliminating all the extra sodium and preservatives.
TURKEY
83 percent of turkey contains antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.” But don’t pick on turkeys; the bugs were also in 57 percent of chicken, and 14 percent of beef and shrimp.
WHAT TO BUY: Look for labels such as “Raised Without Antibiotics” or “No Antibiotics Added.” To be sure, those labels should be coupled with a USDA label, which certifies that producers have been inspected and are complying with their advertised standards.
Aisle 4
Produce
Biggest concerns: jet-fuel shipping (if you’re not buying local); sourcing and labor nightmares (who knows who’s doing that farming?); pesticides that destroy local ecosystems; water shortages (fruits and veggies literally suck the world dry, especially sweet potatoes, asparagus, plums, apricots, and cherries, plus walnuts and almonds). Generally, though, you’re safe buying local and organic.
ALFALFA
Alfalfa kills farmers. Imazethapyr, a common weed killer used on alfalfa, soybean, dry bean, and plenty of other crops, reportedly increases the risks of various cancers in farmers.
WHAT TO BUY: Whenever possible, buy pesticide-free, organic produce.
APPLES
Apples are going extinct. A least the tart and crisp varieties might be headed for extinction, thanks to global warming: Rising temperatures cause the trees to flower earlier, which makes the apples softer and sweeter.
WHAT TO BUY: For now, eat up. They’re full of antioxidants, they’re relatively high in fiber, and they foster brain health. Researchers have found that Granny Smith apples in particular can help prevent diabetes and other disorders related to obesity — because they aid in the growth of friendly bacteria in the colon.
ASPARAGUS
Asparagus drains tap water from the poor.In Peru — now the world’s No. 1 exporter of asparagus — companies are expanding production by pumping groundwater away from the people who need it most — small farms and communities where tap water is now available only once every 10 days.
WHAT TO BUY: While claims that Peru’s asparagus-growing regions boast near-zero unemployment rates add nuance to the debate, buying local is always preferable. Unfortunately, the influx of bundled green spears from Peru and Mexico has made finding U.S.-grown asparagus more challenging of late (so does California’s drought). In 2004, California, the country’s leading asparagus producer, harvested 34,000 acres of the crop. By 2014, that number had fallen to 11,000. Ideally, consumers should get their fill of asparagus from local farmers during the spring harvest, which lasts a mere six weeks from the end of April to the beginning of June.
AVOCADOS
Your guacamole is made with blood avocados. Eighty-five percent of avocados consumed in the U.S. are imported, a large percentage of which come from Michoacán, a Mexican state terrorized by a notorious drug cartel that forces growers to surrender a percentage of their income, seizing whole farms for nonpayment, giving us the “blood avocados” of media hype. Also, avocados are terrible for the environment — growing a single pound of them requires about about 32 gallons of water in Mexico (and as much as 96 gallons in Chile).
WHAT TO BUY: “There are no conflict-free avocados,” José de Córdoba, the Wall Street Journal reporter who first wrote about “blood avocados,”noted in an interview. (In the same interview, de Córdoba admitted to eating avocados “most days.”) Boycotting the extortion of farmers in Michoacán would mean putting those farms out of business. Equal Exchange, a co-op that offers consumers an alternative to the big banana industry, has a similar program with avocado farmers in Mexico. Their avocados are available along the East Coast, around the Great Lakes, and in the Pacific Northwest. Californians can look out for avocados at their local farmers’ markets.
BAGGED SALAD
Bagged salad can be toxic. Last fall, 20 workers were hospitalized after a toxic spill at one of the largest salad processors in North America, Taylor Farms in California. Long before the spill, workers had complained of nosebleeds and vomiting brought on by the fumes. (Fear not, quality control culled away the “bloodied lettuce.”) And other bagged-lettuce companies aren’t great either: See the recent Listeria outbreak that killed one or the 2006 E. Coli outbreak that killed three and hospitalized hundreds. Also of concern: workers’ rights and the environmental impact of excessive packaging.
WHAT TO BUY: Don’t be lazy, just get the whole head.
BANANAS
Your banana habit might be supporting terrorism. In 2007, Chiquita paid a $25 million fine after pleading guilty to supporting terrorists (the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary group that killed thousands of workers, union organizers, and activists). Meanwhile, global warming is leaving the fruit more vulnerable to attacks by mealybugs and scale insects, which thrive under high temperatures. Plus prolonged droughts and winter cold snaps, related to climate change, are making it harder to grow them in the first place.
WHAT TO BUY: Seek out bananas with stickers from Equal Exchange — it’s a worker-owned cooperative that imports bananas from small farms in Peru and Ecuador. The environmental cost isn’t zero, but on every other measure you’ll be ethically comfortable. (Grocery stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s offer organic alternatives to Chiquita and Dole — a company with its own fair share of misdeeds — but don’t necessarily have third-party verification.)
CABBAGE
Cabbage can hear you eating it. Or at least that’s the case with thale cress, cabbage’s close cousin and a go-to for lab experiments. Scientists have found that when caterpillars nibble at the leaves, the vibrations signal the plant cells to produce mustard oil as a defense mechanism — because it’s mildly toxic to insects. You might even say it’s intelligent.
WHAT TO BUY: Just try to forget that fact.
CANNED VEGETABLES
Canned vegetables might give you cancer.The cans are typically lined with the industrial chemical bisphenol A, better known as BPA, and it’s well established that BPA leaches into the food. It’s been linked to many health problems in rodents, and some scientists argue that it causes similar issues in humans. Some studies havesuggested it causes cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infertility, and cancer.
WHAT TO BUY: Frozen vegetables are better, actually. Most kinds do retain their nutrients. Otherwise, glass jars — like those used for olives and artichokes — aren’t necessarily as eco-friendly as aluminum, but they’re a safer bet for your health. But don’t think that cans labeled “BPA-free” will put you in the clear. Often they contain substitutes that are just as harmful as BPA, if not worse.
CRANBERRIES
Cranberries are destroying the wetlands.Farmers have altered natural wetlands to provide prime conditions for cranberries to grow — laying down peat, sand, gravel, and clay. As insects and fungi have adapted, farmers have drowned them out with pesticides, at the expense of hurting birds, fish, and plants that were there first. The berries also depend heavily on fertilizers. And to make matters worse, this polluted water ultimately gets dumped into local groundwater systems.
WHAT TO BUY: Go organic. This way you’ll know the growers didn’t use phosphorus-based fertilizers or pesticides.
BERRIES
Berries are misogynist. Farm workers are calling for a boycott of Driscoll’s Berries, alleging poor pay, wage theft, sexual assault, and sexism at two of the company’s suppliers. The farm where the alleged abuse is taking place also supplies Yoplait and Häagen-Dazs, if you’re looking for another reason to feel guilty after white-chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream.
WHAT TO BUY: As always, local and organic is best.
CORN
Corn is dying. Its production might plummetas the weather gets hotter, drier, and more unpredictable. In 2014, some 20 percent of corn came from areas that depend on irrigation, and most of those are undergoing water shortages. Experts have estimated that a global rise in temperature of just 1.8 degrees will diminish corn production by 7 percent. Considering that corn is in thousands of products — from brown sugar to mayonnaise to laundry detergent — a shortage could cause seismic shifts in the food industry.
WHAT TO BUY: Getting your corn in-season from a local farmer’s roadside stand is great, but your corn-on-the cob habit is not the problem. About 36 percent of corn grown in the United States is used to feed pigs, chickens, and cattle, so buy grass-fed beef.
LETTUCE
Lettuce is worse than bacon. Or, at least, lettuce emits more carbon per calorie than bacon, thanks to all the water and energy it takes to grow it. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon announced last year that if we were to all follow the USDA’s 2010 dietary recommendations — more fruits and vegetables, less sugary processed foods and fats — it would cause a 38 percent increase in energy use.
WHAT TO BUY: Don’t stress it. Odds are, if you were to stop eating bacon, you wouldn’t make up the calories by eating a ludicrous amount of lettuce.
BEANS
Beans can give you something much worse than gas. Farmers spray a quarter-billion pounds of glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup) each year on crops. That means a high percentage of maize, soy grain, wheat, barley, and beans come into contact with this herbicide that the World Health Organization now classifies as “probably carcinogenic to humans” and studies suggest damages the liver and kidneys. Tests have revealeddisconcerting levels of glyphosate residue in nearly a third of bread samples and 90-plus percent of soybeans. The FDA caved earlier this year and finally agreed to start testing foods for it.
WHAT TO BUY: Local and organic, if you can.
OLIVES
Olives are in disguise. Italian authorities recently seized 85,000 metric tons of old olives that had been painted with copper sulfate to look fresh. However, the standard industry practice is perhaps even more scandalous: Black olives are typically picked as green ones — i.e., before they’re ripe — and soaked in an alkaline solution that neutralizes the bitterness. Then they turn black when they’re exposed to oxygen.
WHAT TO BUY: Don’t worry, the solution isn’t considered harmful. But if you want to skip the processing, buy the fresh, uncanned variety instead.
POTATOES
Potatoes are Republican. There’s a possibility your potatoes were grown usingKoch Advanced Nitrogen fertilizer. Yes, that’s Koch as in Koch Brothers, the family that has used its $82 billion fortune to finance free-market principles that are diametrically opposed to ideas like Fair Food certification.
WHAT TO BUY: In 2010, the Wichita Eagle called Koch Industries the third-largest nitrogen-fertilizer company in the world. Considering how much fertilizer is required to grow not only potatoes but also corn feed for chickens, pigs, and cows, cutting Koch fertilizer out of your diet would be a challenge. You can try boycotting products like Dixie, Brawny, and Angel Soft, but there is really no effective way to avoid contributing to a new libertarian world order.
PINEAPPLES
Pineapples destroy your attention span.Infants and toddlers are exposed to pyrethroids, a household pesticide, especially when they eat pineapples, bananas, and dried-oat baby food, according to a 2006study by the Environmental Protection Agency. Everyone ingests trace amounts of pesticides, but another study found that children with the highest levels of pesticides in their systems were 93 percent more likely to have been diagnosed with ADHD.
WHAT TO BUY: While pyrethroids are safer than organophosphates (which were banned from household use more than a decade ago), scientists are only beginning to understand their effects. One surefire way to reduce pesticides in the body is to eat organic. Organophosphates levels present in the urine of children who had been exposed to the banned chemical fell by nearly 50 percent after just seven days on an organic diet, according to a study published last fall in Environmental Health Perspectives.
PESTICIDES
But really, pesticides bathe just about everything. About 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are dumped on crops in the U.S. annually, and the farmers exposed to them have higher rates of cancer of all kinds: leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft-tissue sarcoma as well as cancers of the skin, lip, stomach, brain, and prostate
TOMATOES
Tomatoes are ruining the water supply. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered makers of flubendiamide, an insecticide used on tomatoes, lettuce, watermelon, as well as hundreds of other crops, to take the chemical off the market. Flubendiamide was proved to have adverse effects on tiny, environmentally valuable invertebrates living on the bottoms of rivers, streams, and lakes. By pulling a pesticide with “conditional” approval, the EPA panicked the industry and offered hope to anti-pesticide activists.
WHAT TO BUY: Again, whenever possible, opt for pesticide-free, organic produce.
Aisle 5
Sundries
Frankly, there’s not much to not worry about here, so probably best to limit how much you eat and try to buy stuff with the fewest ingredients listed on the label.
BOTTLED WATER
Bottled water drains the planet. Where to begin? In many areas the caps aren’t recyclable, and they often end up in the oceans; an estimated 90 percent of seabirds eat plastic, much of it in the form of bottle caps. They also require staggering amounts of fossil fuel to be manufactured and shipped. The bottles commonly containestrogenlike chemicals that can leach into the water, with effects on your body similar to the BPA in aluminum cans.
But the most absurd part? It takes two gallons to produce one gallon to drink.
WHAT TO BUY: Step 1: Buy a canteen made by one of many manufacturers competing to develop the ecofriendliest water bottle ever made. Step 2: Make sure you don’t live in a city with criminally neglectful officials who have allowed your water supply to be contaminated by lead (Flint, Michigan) or dangerous chemicals (Charleston, West Virginia). Step 3: Turn on faucet, fill canteen.
BREAD
Gluten isn’t the worst thing in bread. Lots of processed bread still containsazodicarbonamide, the so-called yoga-mat chemical Subway scrambled to remove from its bread in 2014. It’s a completely unnecessary whitening agent and dough conditioner that, at high-enough quantities (in by-product form), increases the incidence of tumors in mice. And it may not even be the most unpleasant artificial ingredient:Potassium bromate, an additive still used to improve crumb structure, has been designated “possibly carcinogenic” by the WHO and banned in most industrialized countries (not including the U.S., however). The FDA has been pleading with companies to remove it since 1991. Also, a bread-heavy diet can weaken your memory and ultimately contribute to dementia.
WHAT TO BUY: It’s best to buy it fresh from a local bakery or at a farmers’ market. If you’re buying it packaged, look in the supermarket refrigerators, where the brands that don’t contain preservatives are stored. You want a short ingredient list, devoid of terms like “calcium propionate,” “monoglycerides,” and “ammonium sulfate.” Wheat bread is better than white; just make sure the label says “100 percent” whole grain or whole wheat. But even better choices are sprouted grains (which contain more nutrients, even if they’re a bit overhyped), or sourdough.
And instead of white bread, look for a label that says “100 percent whole grain” or “100 percent whole wheat” — or even better, opt for a sprouted grain
CANNED SOUP
Canned soup doesn’t help you get well soon.The cans are probably lined with BPA, which has been (inconclusively) linked to cancer, heart disease, and a host of other health issues. And the cans labeled “BPA-free” can contain alternatives that are even worse. Also, the sodium content is often through the roof: sometimes more than half your daily recommended intake in a single can, according to the American Heart Association. And for the sake of your heart, look for a low-sodium variety.
WHAT TO BUY: For the sake of your health, look for the kind packaged in Tetra-Paks, which don’t contain BPA or anything like it. Just be advised that it’s hard to recycle and generally isn’t quite as green as the manufacturer suggests.
CEREAL
Cereal is a fossil fuel. Producing a two-pound box requires the equivalent of burning half a gallon of gasoline. (About 15 percent of U.S. energy goes to supplying our food, and a Cornell professor once estimated that if the rest of humanity had diets similar to those of Americans, we’d exhaust all known fossil-fuel sources in seven years.) Also, General Mills recalled 1.8 million boxes of gluten-free Cheerios for possibly containing wheat after all.
Many cereals also contain artificial dyes, such as yellow No. 5 and No. 6, which may have links to cancer, anxiety, migraines, and hyperactivity. The European Union requires a warning label on many products containing these ingredients, but the FDA does not. And finally, many cereals have ahigh glycemic index, which makes them a recipe for diabetes.
WHAT TO BUY: Everyone knows oatmeal is extremely healthy — at least the unprocessed, whole-oat variety. If you prefer cold cereal, opt for oat bran, organic granola, or shredded wheat. Just check the packaging and look for a short ingredient list and low sugar content. Or make your own granola at home — it’s remarkably easy.
On an encouraging note, General Mills has announced that it will stop using any artificial colors in its cereals by the year’s end.
PROCESSED CHEESE
Processed cheese will make you ill. Some emulsifiers that hold processed cheese together have, in some instances, caused kidney damage that required dialysis. Other emulsifiers are known to cause allergic reactions, diarrhea, muscle pain, vomiting, and dizziness.
WHAT TO BUY: Stick to real cheese, preferably made from the milk of grass-fed cows.
CHOCOLATE
Chocolate is made by child slaves. A recentstudy by Tulane University estimates that more than 2 million children work in hazardous conditions during the cocoa harvest in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Also, there’s the environmental cost: To keep up with demand, farmers in West Africa now grow cocoa in a way that shortens the life span of the trees and exhausts the land, tearing down rain forests in the process.
WHAT TO BUY: The Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, USDA Organic, and non-GMO labels are worth looking for, but don’t think of any of them as an end-all. If you really love chocolate, consider shelling out for the bean-to-bar variety, which runs in the neighborhood of $8 a bar. The designation means a single company handles every step of the production process, starting with the cacao bean. A few of the bigger names areDandelion Chocolate, Askinosie Chocolate, and Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier.
COCONUT WATER
Coconut water is also made by slaves. In the Philippines, 60 percent of small-scale farmers live in poverty, sometimes making as little as $72 a year, even as we shell out $1.50 per bottle. Elsewhere, it’s even worse: If the coconut water didn’t come from Fair Trade–certified coconuts, the guy who climbed 80 feet to cut your coconut from the tree is probably only making a few dollars a day. And it takes loads of fossil fuel to ship them across the world.
WHAT TO BUY: Try Harmless Harvest or Alaffia, which are certified Fair for Life — meaning decent working conditions are guaranteed for all their staff. Fair Trade USA also has a coconut-certification program, wherein farmers receive an extra $40 to $90 premium per metric ton, to be used for causes like health care, education, and agricultural training.
Or if the environment is your chief concern, consider dehydrated coconut powder — like the varieties from Big Tree Farms and Navitas Naturals — which you can mix with water. It eliminates the cost of shipping actual coconuts.
COFFEE
Global warming will kill coffee. In some of the world’s top coffee-producing regions, such as Brazil and Central America, almost 50 percent of the land is likely to become unsuitable by 2050 — because of global warming. Plus, since it’s become the new norm to grow coffee beans by exposing them to the sun, again it means tearing down rain forests.
WHAT TO BUY: Of the many certifications and buzzwords you’ll see on coffee packages, perhaps the most trustworthy is “Bird-Friendly Certified.” It requires that the product be genuinely shade-grown, to the point of even mandating a canopy height of at least 12 meters, so its production doesn’t lead directly to rain-forest destruction — plus it requires USDA Organic certification.
On the ethics side, a rule of thumb is that if it’s cheap, someone is almost certainly being exploited. But price alone isn’t an effective barometer of ethical purity. Fair Trade certification is worth looking for, as it sets a minimum price of $1.40 per pound for the growers, though it’s been criticized for not ensuring that this price translates to a living wage for those who work for the growers. So a better alternative is to go with a local company that buys directly from farmers. The standards vary from one producer to another, so the label “direct trade” gives no guarantees. But the best ones are transparent about their practices, so you can dig deeper yourself. Some of the most ubiquitous are Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and Peet’s.
ENERGY BARS
Energy bars make you dumber. Researchers at UCLA found that fructose—found in many energy bars— stymied a group of rats’ ability to think and navigate a familiar maze. The rats “were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity.” According to the USDA, the average American consumes about 35 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup and 47 pounds of cane sugar every year, which might explain why you keep getting lost in Ikea.
WHAT YOU SHOULD BUY: Choose your energy bar carefully. Skip the chocolate-flavored PowerBar or Tiger’s Milk and pick something with flaxseed for its fatty omega-3s, which counter the effects of high-fructose corn syrup. Walnuts are also high in omega-3s, and you should be eating more nuts. An enormous study done between 1980 and 2010 found that participants who ate nuts seven or more times a week were 20 percent less likely to die over that 20-year period. Those who ate nuts were less likely to die of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses.
FRENCH FRIES
French fries might cause cancer. Theycontain relatively high levels of acrylamide, which is a chemical formed when certain kinds of foods are cooked at high temperatures. (Potato chips and bread are also major offenders.) It’s been known to cause cancer in lab animals when they ingest it in high doses, and although it’s never been proved to do the same in humans, the National Toxicology Program says it’s “reasonably anticipated” to be a human carcinogen. They also have a high glycemic load, which means they can make your blood sugar shoot up. So eat up if you want to get diabetes.
WHAT TO BUY: The important thing is just to not eat them too often. But you can feel fine about homemade French fries; boiling them for about 15 minutes first will significantly reduce your exposure to acrylamide and bring down the glycemic index.
HONEY
Honey is made by insect slaves. Commercial beekeepers drive more than 1 million hives all over the country to track season crops,according to PETA, and these trips “clobber the bees with physiological stress, pesticides, diseases, and related disorders.” It’s also common to cut off the queen’s wings so she can’t swarm. And because bees apparently originated in tropical climates, they die off in staggering numbers during North American winters. And the horrors don’t end there: Researchers at theU.S. Pharmacopeial Convention have often found store-bought honey to be adulterated with cheaper sweeteners like corn syrup.
WHAT TO BUY: Buy your honey local, or refer to this guide curated by Ethical Consumer, which ranks 18 brands on categories like environmental impact and animal treatment. It lets you customize the list, depending on whether you care most about sustainability, politics, or animal treatment. At the top of its composite rankings are Equal Exchange, Tropical Forest, and Raw Health. Or try another sweetener, like maple syrup, rice syrup, or molasses.
HUMMUS
Hummus is politicized. A parent company of Sabra, the leading chickpea spread, has provided financial support to an elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces.
WHAT TO BUY: If that bugs you, try Cedar’s, which is produced near Boston and is certified non-GMO.
MAPLE SYRUP
Maple syrup: another victim of climate change. Global warming is making it less sweet. The trees stop producing sugar when it gets too hot, and during uncommonly warm seasons, scientists have seen a 40 percent sugar reduction. Another result is that it now takes twice as much sap to make a gallon of syrup as it did several decades ago. And stay away from “Pancake Syrup” like Aunt Jemima or Hungry Jack — it contains caramel color, which can contain a chemical (4-MeI) that’s been linked to tumors in mice.
WHAT TO BUY: None of this means you should quit eating it (the non-pancake variety, that is). It’s full of antioxidants and healthy minerals, such as magnesium and iron, and the maple trees help the environment byabsorbing huge amounts of atmospheric carbon. In fact, it makes a great alternative to sugar and artificial sweeteners. Just look for a product with no added ingredients.
MAYONNAISE
Mayonnaise = GMO city. Over half the ingredients in a jar of brand-name mayo are likely to involve genetic modification: soybean oil, vinegar, sugar, even the eggs and egg yolks.
WHAT TO BUY: Hampton Creek Foods and Follow Your Heart makealternatives that contain no eggs or other animal products. If you’d rather not go vegan, look for brands that are organic and verified by the Non-GMO Project, like Spectrum Organic.
OLIVE OIL
Olive oil plantations are environmentally ruinous. All the demand has given rise to intensive plantations that depend on massive irrigation, pollute the environment with agrochemicals, and cause soil erosion. Amid recent droughts, water sources not touched for thousands of years are now being tapped — “all for a few more olives,” one environmental consultantlamented.
Moreover, a landmark study in 2011 estimated that roughly 69 percent of the imported olive oil marketed in the U.S. as “extra virgin” wasn’t worthy of the name. The term is supposed to denote that the product you’re getting is just the pure juice of fresh olives, made with no solvents or additives, and that it was pressed at relatively low temperatures. But many of those bottles are adulterated with cheaper soybean and seed oils, and the FDA doesn’t have the time or resources to pick fights over this.
WHAT TO BUY: When it comes to the environment, you can feel safe with any of the finalists for the Good Food Awards: Berkeley Olive Grove 1913, Apollo Olive Oil, the Olive Press, among others. They’re judged on strict standards of sustainability.
To make sure it’s truly extra virgin, you can look at the harvest date, the region it comes from, and the cultivars (i.e. what kinds of olives it’s composed of). If this information is missing from the bottle, pick a different brand. Or a simpler way is to consult the expert Tom Mueller’slist. Incidentally, Mueller has major variations within the house brands at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Costco — e.g., among all the Whole Foods blends, only its California 365 blend qualifies.
ORANGE JUICE
Orange juice rots your teeth: A lot of it comes from Brazil, where growers use an agrichemical (carbendazim) that’s illegal in the U.S. It also requires a huge amount of irrigation water (up to 129,000 cubic feet per acre annually). It’s also energy-intensive to ship the not-from-concentrate kind all those miles, but the from-concentrate kind isn’t much better, given all the fuel used to keep it frozen.
WHAT TO BUY: Florida Valencia oranges are the gold standard for fresh squeezed OJ and they’re available March through May. Any other time of year, you’re going to be drinking a blend of pasteurized Florida juice and Brazilian oranges.
QUINOA
The quinoa fad destroyed the South American food chain. Super-seed devotees were crestfallen when The Guardian reported that global appetite for quinoa was so great the grain had become too valuable for Andean farmers to consume. That threat seems to have been overhyped, but feel free to worry about the environmental impact of the quinoa craze as farmers expand on the fragile Altiplano.
WHAT TO BUY: Maybe try to find the next superfood?
PALM OIL
Palm oil got too cool. In recent years, it’s become a popular substitute for shortening because it contains no trans fat (still it's really high in saturated fat). But the increased demand has spurred the destruction of rain forests in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for oil-palm plantations. And deforestation — in addition to destroying the habitats of endangered species, such as rhinos and orangutans — propels global warming. Palm trees are great for containing carbon dioxide (when they’re left alone), and the forests absorb rainfall and then release it into streams and rivers, which minimizes flooding and soil depletion. (Soybean production islinked to the same problem.)
WHAT TO BUY: Avoiding palm oil may be easy for people like Gwyneth Paltrow or Tom Brady, who counts raw macaroons as a “treat.” But for those of us who enjoy chocolate, pizza, bread, or anything else that requires vegetable oil, palm oil is an inevitability. Look for RSPO labels. Both organizations certify products made from sustainably harvested palm oil.
POP-TARTS
Pop-Tarts are making your kid misbehave, and it’s not just the sugar. Earlier this year, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, citing eight different independent studies in the past five years, estimated that food coloring caused “adverse behavioral reactions” in over half a million children in the United States. Other countries have taken action: Strawberry Pop-Tarts in the United Kingdom are colored with beetroot red, annatto, and paprika extract; in the United States, they’re artificially colored with Red No. 40, Yellow No. 6, and Blue No. 1.
WHAT TO BUY: There is some good news. A lot of major companies are taking steps on their own to remove artificial food coloring. Kellogg’s says cereals and snack bars will be food-dye-free by 2018; General Mills, Kraft, Nestlé, and Pepperidge Farms have all taken steps to remove artificial food coloring; and earlier this year Mars said it would remove food dyes from its candy over the next five years.
SALT
Salt isn’t just bad for your heart. May contain micro-bits of plastic, especially in salt sourced from the ocean. Also, most table salt is mined from underground salt deposits, then put through a machine that dries it out, which is very energy-intensive. Fancier salts often come from sea water pumped into shallow ponds to evaporate naturally, causing a smaller carbon footprint, but these require facilities that environmentalists say disrupt existing ecosystems, and they’re more likely to be shipped from far away.
WHAT TO BUY: There are some local, artisanal options, such as Urban Sproule, Wellfleet, and Amagansett (from the East Coast) and Jacobsen (from the West Coast). But don’t get carried away; unless you consume salt by the pound, the environmental impact is probably negligible.
SELTZER WATER
Seltzer water will send you to the dentist. It’s popular because it has none of soda’s calories or diet drinks’ artificial sweeteners. But it also has carbonic acid, which can wear away the enamel on your teeth. Flavored varieties, especially those with lemon and lime, tend to be the most corrosive of all, thanks to citric acid. One study that exposed teeth to flavored sparkling waters for 30 minutes found the effects to be similar to that of orange juice.
WHAT TO BUY: The safest way to go is to drink mineral water, like Perrier or San Pellegrino. They have ingredients like calcium phosphate that can offset some of the tooth damage, and they also have significantly higher levels of magnesium than regular tap water. Even club soda is at leastmarginally better than seltzer. But if it's all you can get from the office vending machine, you can always just dilute it with tap water or swish with tap water afterward.
SOY
Soy isn’t even vaguely natural. It’s the most heavily genetically modified food in the country, and GMOs may be toxic to certain animals — like butterflies and bees.
WHAT TO BUY: If Frankenfoods don’t freak you out, go nuts. But non-GMO verified tofu, tempeh, and soy milk are also easily available.
SPAGHETTI
Spaghetti hates homosexuals. The president of pasta-manufacturer Barilla told an Italian radio station several years ago that he’d “never make [a commercial] with a homosexual family,” and added, “If [gays] don’t like it, then they can eat another brand.” Also, a recent study found that non-smokers who have diets high on the glycemic index (pasta, white bread, bagels) might be linked to lung cancer.
WHAT TO BUY: Unless you’re in a punitive mood, don’t worry. After LGBT activists called for a boycott and started a petition to have Barilla products pulled from shelves, the president apologized for his comments. Barilla created a diversity and inclusion board, and in 2014, it won a perfect score in a Human Rights Campaign ranking of employers that are LGBT-friendly. Barilla — and plenty of other pasta-makers — sells whole grain pasta, which might help lower your glycemic level.
SUGAR
Sugar is as bad for the environment as it is for you. Possibly responsible for eliminating more biodiversity than any other crop — between the habitats destroyed to create plantations, the sugar farmers’ heavy use of agricultural chemicals, the water they use for irrigation, and the polluted wastewater they discharge afterward. Big Sugar is the largest polluter in the Florida Everglades. But maybe your sugar comes from the Dominican Republic, where Haitian immigrants cut sugarcane for 12 hours a day earning about $2.82 an hour. Also, the “refining” in “refined sugar” often involves cow-bone char, which is made by heating animal bones at incredibly high temperatures. The char acts as a filter to decolorize the sugar and absorb inorganic material.
And besides the obvious risk of diabetes, excessive sugar is terrible for your skin. The molecules can attach themselves to your collagen fibers, which makes the skin more vulnerable to wrinkling, sagging, and sun damage.
WHAT TO BUY: Opt for local maple syrup, or — if you’re not a strict vegan — local honey. If you want a more precise substitute, consider coconut sugar, which is made with minimal processing and mostly harvested by small-scale producers. Look for the Fair Trade and/or Organic labels.
SUGAR ALTERNATIVES
Sugar alternatives: also bad. Turns out artificial sweeteners may worsen metabolic disorders like obesity (studies now show they do a fantastic job tricking the body as well into thinking they’re real). Sucralouse, which is in Splenda might give you “increased stool frequency”; that means it gets flushed into sewer systems and ends up in the oceans.
WHAT TO BUY: From a health standpoint, Stevia is probably the best of the bunch. Just be aware that it’s sometimes harvested on deforested rain-forest property, so it may not be perfectly sustainable. The Rainforest Alliance and Organic certifications are worth looking for.
WHEAT
Wheat is the most fertilizer-intensive food in the world. According to the Fertilizer Institute, fertilizer is toxic for the environment — or the synthetic kind is, anyway. When its nitrates seep into the ground, they set off reactions that dissolve uranium from rocks and sediment, and the uranium contaminates crops and water. It also contributes to air pollution and climate change; an expert from the American Chemical Society has called this “the biggest environmental disaster that nobody has heard of.”
WHAT TO BUY: If you’re concerned about sustainability, go organic. Synthetic fertilizers are banned from the production of all organic products.
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