Page 205 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

2 Problem: Foods that are low-calorie can be low- or no-nutrient
and high-resource. Approximately one-third of Americans’
calories come from “nutrient-poor” foods. When we choose
nutrient-poor foods that are also calorie-free or low-
calorie, it might seem like a wash. What’s the harm? Well,
we’re still pouring heaps of natural resources into produc-
ing essentially useless products. Air-popped chips come
to mind, for example. Or take diet soda. A 16.9-ounce
bottle might contain zero calories. Bravo. Except it actu-
ally involves between 170 and 310 liters of water to make
that much soda and deliver it to you in that plastic bottle,
according to a figure the Water Footprint Network provided
to the New York Times. As we know, single-use containers
are buggers. For empty calories, think also of all the energy
required to produce those foods—the lights to power the
factories, the electricity to power the machines, the fuel
to drive the trucks or ships to move the large volumes of
nutritionally pointless products all around the world. Not
to mention the resources required to make the plastic or
the cardboard or that silvery lining material of chip bags.
All that energy (and land) could have gone into making a
nutrient-rich food, maybe even a high-calorie but higher-
quality food, for someone who needs it. It’s situations like
these that contribute to the obesity-hunger paradox, which
you can think of as two sides of the same coin. Solution:
Replace nutrient-poor foods (whether packed with calo-
ries or not) with nutrient-rich foods—especially those that
don’t involve a lot of processing and packaging. Both your
body and this little planet of ours will thank you.
3 Problem: Foods that are high-nutrient, low-calorie, and low-resource
are often low-profit, making them a tough economic sell. I’m talking
fruits and veggies, unfortunately. Cancer researchers have
found a gaping hole between what the US government

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