Dining Out With Green In Mind

Eating out can serve as a healthy and eco-friendly dining option if you do it right, according to some bloggers. From the vast choice of organic produce, reduction of energy and responsible food waste programs, restaurants now offer sustainable dining out options for conscientious green diners.

Here's an idea that may seem counter-intuitive to you, but it can be argued that eating out in (certain) restaurants is more eco-friendly than cooking at home.

What? Yes, you heard me. Although I am not exactly advocating that you give all your dishes away, there are several arguments that can be made towards leaving the cooking to others.

A new text messaging feature called FishPhone from the Blue Ocean Institute enables users to gauge the environmental impact of a particular seafood.

I texted "Fish Talipia" to the number from my cell phone and within half a minute I received this reply:

farmed China or Taiwan (RED) significant environmental concerns; Central America (YELLOW) some env. concerns; U.S. (GREEN) few environmental concerns.

The colors in parenthesis refer to the color coded key that Blue Ocean Institute's online
guide to ocean friendly seafood uses to indicate the environmental impact of the farming/fishing of each type of fish. It's a useful guide, but it's not going to be with me when I'm at the seafood market or in a restaurant. This is why I think the text messaging service is so great.

And when deciding on your culinary destination, you can also search the database of certified green restaurants.

More on green living from the Huffington Post.

-OR-

More suggestions on ways to eat healthy while dining out on the Huffington Post.

Comments

[Guitarsandmore]

04:00 PM on 07/29/2008

I'm all for eating vegetables and legumes but all you wanna be chefs need to remember when it comes to spices, less is more. My complaint with the Natural Cafe in my town is that the guacamole smells like my daughter’s tennis shoes and tastes like Old English furniture polish.

Guacamole is supposed to be avocado with a little salsa mixed in for seasoning; nothing more nothing less.

Natural Café also manages to screw up basic pasta and sauce recipes so that instead of tasting natural it tastes more like a toxic waste dump.

Their humus is OK and the eggplant and other grilled vegetables are good but over all it is a spotty experience at best.

I would like to patronize the Natural Café in my town more but it takes me a month to recover in between visits.

[anthonylee]

12:10 AM on 07/27/2008

As a lacto-vegetarian this is a great article, I just wish my area had more than 3 restaurants trying to go "green"!

[PatA]

12:44 PM on 07/26/2008

Eating meat is madness!

[Jain]

10:30 PM on 07/25/2008

Settle down vegans.
Factory farms are bad for the environment, no doubt, but there is a growing movement of sustainable "meat" farms.
Al Gore understands this.
People want to make a better environment for future generations. And this will include people who eat meat.

[GretaR]

03:13 PM on 07/25/2008

The truest "green" dining would be vegetarian / vegan, since a veg*n lifestyle
is the most eco-friendly. I challenge restaurants to offer at least one
such option in each category -- appetizer, entree, desert, wine -- and to
change those options regularly.

(If you are a chef willing to take that veg*n challenge in your restaurant,
I'd like to feature you in the soon-to-launch VegetarianDiner.com. Email editor [@] VegetarianDiner.com.)

It should be the goal of every restaurant to make recipes that are creative,
interesting, and flavorful. A goal that can be achieved without meat. One
of my favorite fine dining restaurants in Wilmington, NC, had weekly
specials, and at least one of those would be vegetarian, in addition to the
regular vegetarian options(s). Omnivore friends would order the vegetarian
special because it sounded the best. And, they were never disappointed. (We
aren't talking about some boring pasta and marinara sauce.)

There are some 12 million vegetarian / vegans in the U.S. alone. We'd like to
enjoy fine dining (and even not-so-fine dining) experiences too. If you
"build" it, we will come.

[enveg01]

05:08 PM on 07/25/2008

Right on Greta! The only true eco-friendly meal is a locally grown vegan meal. Animal agriculture is the number one cause of global warming (more so than all the transportation in the world) and our seas will collapse by 2048 at our current rate of overfishing. There is no way to be green and eat animals.