EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

If you can still afford to eat out, you will probably see more eco-friendly menu options at restaurants this year. Locallygrown produce, meat and drinks rate alongside general sustainability as the top food trends for 2010. The National Restaurant Association surveyed 1,800 professional chefs from the American Culinary Federation in late 2009, and tallied the top 10 projected trends for the coming year.

They are:

1. Locally grown produce
2. Locally sourced meats and seafood
3. Sustainability as a culinary theme
4. Mini-desserts
5. Locally produced wine and beer
6. Nutritious kids’ meals
7. Half-portions/smaller portions for a lower price
8. Farm-branded ingredients
9. Gluten-free/food-allergy conscious meals
10. Sustainable seafood

I count at least eight of these as sustainability measures. (I am including smaller desserts and portions as they will lead to less food waste, which in turn means less food production, saving the energy of growing food that just ends up in the garbage.) And if the restaurants follow through on their promise to cut prices, it could be an attractive recession option even for those who aren’t interested in the ecological benefits.

Sustainable seafood is swimming to the top of everyone’s agenda, from families to grocery stores to restaurants. Dozens of organizations and groups, including the Smithsonian and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have developed sustainable seafood guides, and the Seafood Summit later this month in France will further increase awareness.

All the local food and booze cuts out the energy costs of transportation, and is more likely to come from small, sustainable local farms. But there’s a catch. It’s only more sustainable if it’s grown in season. For example, fresh local tomatoes served in Chicago in the winter would certainly have been grown in a greenhouse, which may negate the transportation energy savings of imported field-grown tomatoes.

The BBC estimates that a British greenhouse tomato generates three times the emissions of a Spanish tomato. Unfortunately, the same study does not analyze the energy costs for transporting the tomate, but it may clearly be less than three times the production energy costs.

The few local-only and sustainability-themed restaurants around the country may have started for purely environmental reasons, but if most of these 1,800 chefs are jumping on board, many are clearly looking at the bottom line and demand is driving their sustainability efforts.

The chefs also said they are shopping for environmentally friendly equipment and planting gardens onsite. It doesn’t get much more local than that.

At area restaurants, toast the chefs and owners if they are choosing local, sustainable food. And by the way, if you can still afford to eat at restaurants, you’re probably not a blogger and freelance writer. Maybe you can take me out to dinner and we can have a lively discussion about sustainability.

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