Page 227 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

a difference in the total equation. At least with takeout you don’t
need all the infrastructure to keep the ingredients chilled, and
some municipalities let you compost take-out containers, but
how many people actually know the ins and outs of their waste
management company? They’re likely getting tossed. Takeout
often comes in plastic bags, sometimes with sub-components
in similarly wasteful packaging, like individually sized packets
of soy sauce that you don’t use, or lots of separate containers
for separate items. All in all, it seems a wash on sustainability— both are
equally wasteful. So the winner is only health, with the meal kit taking
this one.
WINNER: Meal kit

ROUND 3: MEAL KIT VS. PLANNING A WEEK
OF MEALS AND SHOPPING ONCE
The meals in the meal kit may be healthier and/or more bal-
anced than what you’d pick to make on your own, though it
depends on which service and which program you select, and
the same goes for the environmental and social responsibility
comparison.
But the biggest reason that regular cooking is the better
option is the overarching question of being a direct partici-
pant in the food system. A critical layer of conscious eating
gets lost in the meal kit transition: selecting your ingredients.
This book is about practical choices but also about aspirational
living, and although not that many people actually plan all
their meals and shop once a week anymore, that approach
wins: Health and environment are comparable, but planning and
shopping keeps you connected to where food comes from and the peo-
ple behind it—talking to farmers at the farmers’ market, say, or
doing your homework on which producers to support with your
grocery dollars in terms of animal welfare and labor practices.
With meal kits, you don’t get to make all of those critical

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