Eco-living in Barcelona and Infographictastic (On Friday’s I write)

I finally watched “Kiss the Ground” with Woody Harrelson this week. I was impressed with how powerfully they transmit the message that for the planet, but also massively for our own individual health, we should make careful choices about what we eat. They show you the extremes that exist – from buying into monoculture and incredible amounts of chemicals, to buying food that will actually have a positive impact on ecosystems.

We are so often presented with the story that we humans have a negative, or at best neutral, effect on the world, but this film turns that around and leaves you wondering how you can design your eating and shopping habits to have a positive impact. With Regenerative Agriculture and ecosocially designed farms this is possible. 

But it will be a journey! I will share resources as we move slowly on our journey towards feeding ourselves in a regenerative way here in Barcelona. And this weeks post is the once-a-month post which focuses on what we are doing towards eco-living in our Poble Sec appartment.

children’s breakfast

Our daughter’s breakfast is far from regenerative. She insists on this new type of cereal which is like biscuits with chocolate cereal inside. Was it, and is it still, an inevitable path in our world that the choices become more unhealthy over time? For now, at home, we have an agreement – half a bowl of standard cereal from the organic supermarket (not great), 3 pieces of biscuity cereal (which is an example of the worst type of processed foods), and organic oat milk (ok). We choose oat milk rather than rice, almond or soy, as the embedded transport energy is less, and the ingredients are more local. I am still failing convince anyone else in the family to consume the home-made oat milk. 

processed foods

As a general rule processed foods have the worst ingredients, from the worst types of farming (so many foods still contain Palm Oil for example). They also have the worst packaging with non-recycled, non-compostable, brightly coloured and excessive packaging.  So how can we step away from these? One thing I do is have a light breakfast with just a fruit smoothie, then have some toasted organic bread a bit later. That takes the dreaded breakfast cereal out of the equation. Maja use to eat oats, and mix in dried fruit and nuts herself. 

We fill the fridge with fresh vegetables and the challenge is to make sure you use them before they go bad, so even if we are eating packaged food sometimes, there are always fresh vegetables on the side. I am incredibly excited about starting to grow our salad greens next week. We barely eat salad because whole lettuces are big and we refuse to buy it in bags. 

Then the main trick is to learn to cook. Start with one recipe and build up. This is my favourite staple hearty dinner, and at the moment it includes tinned tomato and a jar of precooked lentils, so there’s room for improvement. 

• chopped onion and garlic fried and throw in salt, pepper, hierbas de provenza or oregano whatever you have. Throw in some wine if there’s any around, or a bit of vinegar. 
• Add chopped potato and any other veg that needs using up (if it’s a thin leafy veg leave it until 5 mins before the end). Add water or stock, cooked brown lentils and tinned tomato. Leave it for about 20 mins simmering away. 

Totally simple and all the family like it. Good with loads of liquid like a soup. Also good with hardly any liquid like a vegetable dish.

Good luck with cutting down your processed foods!

current levels of regenerative eating in our house

Well certainly the olives! We have plenty of olives from Boodaville and regularly gift them to people. Our olive oil from Cova Fullola too. Apart from that, although most of the food we buy, processed or otherwise is organic, we don’t have other produce “beyond organic” and it will be interesting to see what it’s possible to get here in Barcelona.

zerowaste carnaval

My daughter has “carnaval” today which means dressing up. She knew which Disney princess she wanted to be (the brave one from Brave) and with the help of Wallapop it was fairly easy to get the dress second hand. I remember “ragging” my hair when I was a teenager, so we tore up an old cloth and made her hair curly by tying it in knots overnight. I wasn’t sure it would work though, so I offered her the option of spraying her hair orange. I asked around the parents, correctly guessing that it would be easy to get hold of a half empty tin. In the evening we practised spraying a bit of hair and she quickly complained that the smell was like nail varnish remover. I explained all the chemicals and toxins in the spray and said, “you decide tomorrow if you want to use it or not, keep touching the part of your hair that was sprayed and see if you feel it is healthy of damaged”. In the morning she had decided not to use the spray (now we have to give the half empty can back where it came from!!)

GAH! I just remembered. The bow she used in the costume is one of the very few new toys I’ve bought her over the years. Nearly a zerowaste carnaval. I strongly believe that Wallapop is good for the world. 

from around the world

I signed up to the Nature daily briefing recently and am really enjoying it. This infographic below is particularly striking

zach bush

I went down a Zach Bush hole and ended up on the website “Quack or Science”. His ideas seem pretty out there; pollution causes death not viruses, glyphosate messed with our bodies being able to produce proteins and is responsable for almost all sickness and allergies. He was criticised for massively exaggerating the way in which  the results of one study supported his theory. But overall he doesn’t seem to be particularly quack. I’d like to know who his marketing people are (he switched to a new sneaky company in 2019), because he gets out there in an interesting way and members of my family are utterly convinced by him. There is a comment on the page saying this:

Its funny when you compare the zachbushmd website to all these new generation regenerative farming websites – farmers footprint, kiss the ground, mad agriculture; they’re pretty much all the same

Inspirational but vague goals with limited info on what they actually do. All of them centre around a slick video that’s high on emotion but ambiguous on details

All the donate now buttons are quite promient

Seems like a well run donation scam that’s growing

I spend a LOT of time studying and following Regenerative Agriculture and I can assure you that it is a real solution and absolutely not a scam. Reading this I temporarily resorted to the kind of binary language that we should be trying to avoid and thought “Well I’m against anyone who is against Kiss the Ground, which in this case means I’m on Zach’s side”.

ADAM CURTIS

And to further explain that binary language comment I leave you with something brilliant I heard on the radio yesterday. I look forward to checking out this new series by Adam Curtis and the interview (starting at 2hr12) is an excellent 10 minute listen. Highly highly recommended. 

Lauren Laverne spoke to Adam Curtis on the radio yesterday, I found it brilliant! Start from 2:12 

And here ends my random writing for this week.