Page 263 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

OVERALL SUSTAINABILITY
The quickest way to get this information may be from the non-
profit Green Restaurant Association. They certify restaurants
on a four-star scale across eight environmental indicators:
water efficiency, waste reduction and recycling, sustain-
able durable goods and building materials, sustainable food,
energy, reusables and environmentally preferable disposables,
chemical and pollution reduction, and transparency and edu-
cation. The Green Restaurant Association has been assessing
restaurants since its founding in 1990. So far, the certification
has been earned by independently run coffee shops, cafés,
fine-dining restaurants, and select venues in corporate and
university settings, rather than large-scale chain restaurants
or food-service companies. Search dinegreen.com for listings of
certified green restaurants by state.

AVAILABILITY OF PLANT-BASED MEALS
Power begins with choice—so finding places to eat where
you can choose from a variety of plant-based meals is key to
being an empowered conscious eater. Why? Because the sta-
tus quo is meat-centric menus wherever you go, and we know
that plant-based foods tend to have lower water and carbon
footprints. Enter the Good Food Restaurant Scorecard. It’s an
annual ranking of the top 100 restaurant brands in the United
States based on the extent of their plant-based menu options.
The Good Food Institute rates each company on a ten-point
scale based on factors such as:

entrées that are completely plant-based (no ingredients
coming from animals);
having default entrées be free of meat, meaning a cus-
tomer might be able to add chicken to a pasta order, but
it’s been decoupled from the base entrée;

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