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Step 3Setting up your food system (part 1)
In this next stop we will envision to produce our own food to decrease our pressure on the environment. We can be assured of this as producing it ourselves decreases the carbondioxide requirements needed for the food's production. In addition, it will allow us other benefits as increased health and the saved trouble of continuously needing to go to the supermarket by car, hauling with boxes and parcels and playing along the present game of society. Finally further advantages are that we can heavily decrease our expenses, increase our self-sufficiency, decrease dishwashing-efforts (less sugar/fat=less scrubbing) and increase shelf life of the products (eg rice can keep several years, we pickle certain products, can them, dry them or apply other preservation techniques.
In the coming month or so, we'll try to find alternatives to foods we've liked and replace them. Examples are:
- replacing drinks as cola, lemonade, sugared ice tea, ... by light soups, teas, coffee, mate, karkade, ...
and replacing (subtropical/tropical) fruit as melons, guava, pineapples by pears, blueberries, apples, ... We will do this it are foodstuffs which we will not be able to cultivate at our home food production system we will prepare on making (in step 6). 'PS note that in some circumstances honey and certain sweeteners as Stevia and liquorice may however be produced, giving some options in retaining certain sweet drinks.
To set-up our system, we will also try to find the most co2-lean alternatives. Looking for vegan, macrobiotic, certain fruitarian/raw food, ... subsitutes for our previous foods (as tofu, seitan, tempeh, and other meat analogues) is probably a good approach. In addition, we may get our first info from The USDA the food pyramid (old version) and the new version. This pyramid may be altered with other diets as the Okinawa-diet, Gandhi-diet, CRON-diet, ... Diets as these have slightly other portions and set-ups than the original USDA recommendations. They also allow increased cost reduction and environmental advantage.
To get the first insights on how we are going to get things up and running we'll look into books as the anti-aging plan, Joel Fuhrman's Eat to live, the Okinawa-program (you may first rent them from the library and review them to save expenses). In addition, we may once again look to our PESwiki page and review to some of the examples given by other self-sufficient/autonomous buildings (eg the Integral Urban House, ...). You may finally also take a look at my own food-production set-up from the zip file added at step 1 and 6. (see autonomous home system-map), Finally, we'll also take a look at a working example from another professor from our Instructable-labs which has created a working example.
In addition, we will measure our caloric requirements and optimal weight. We may do so by skinfold measurements, densiometry, and/or bioelectrical impedance analysis. With these, we can perfectly dimension our food system to generate no more produce than required, or we can use it to know how much food/nutrients to obtain from dumpsters, ... (calories are always mentioned on the labels). Usually, no more than 2000 kcal are required for a normal person per day and a BMI of 17.7 (which too was Ghandi's BMI) may be sufficient. In addition, we will look ahead and remind ourselves that if we would like to go live in a tropical/subtropical country (see step 5), the amount of meals or caloric content of the food is to become lowered (this, as our calorie requirements will be less due to a increased ambient temperature) and that we are to wear more clothing instead. Note that dressing up better and/or decreasing our meals may also be done in favor of the environment (and/or our wallet). This as it allows us to decrease our energy requirements and or the amount of space heating we require. This concept is also much applied by the homeless (true survival experts!), and as such, we may rest assured that it works.
An alternative to the food production system may also be to start plain dumpster diving, foraging or other subsistance techniques and/or use organic material found in the city dumpsters to vermicompost and provide our foodplants with high-grade fertiliser (make sure you have permission). Note that aldough all of these latter techniques will allow us to decrease costs and attain environmental benefits, they will not provide some of the other advantages noted with the home food production system.
After a month or so, we'll have figured out what foods we like and we'll return on this topic (unless offcourse you are opting for the alternatives noted as plain dumpster diving, ...).
In the coming month or so, we'll try to find alternatives to foods we've liked and replace them. Examples are:
- replacing drinks as cola, lemonade, sugared ice tea, ... by light soups, teas, coffee, mate, karkade, ...
and replacing (subtropical/tropical) fruit as melons, guava, pineapples by pears, blueberries, apples, ... We will do this it are foodstuffs which we will not be able to cultivate at our home food production system we will prepare on making (in step 6). 'PS note that in some circumstances honey and certain sweeteners as Stevia and liquorice may however be produced, giving some options in retaining certain sweet drinks.
To set-up our system, we will also try to find the most co2-lean alternatives. Looking for vegan, macrobiotic, certain fruitarian/raw food, ... subsitutes for our previous foods (as tofu, seitan, tempeh, and other meat analogues) is probably a good approach. In addition, we may get our first info from The USDA the food pyramid (old version) and the new version. This pyramid may be altered with other diets as the Okinawa-diet, Gandhi-diet, CRON-diet, ... Diets as these have slightly other portions and set-ups than the original USDA recommendations. They also allow increased cost reduction and environmental advantage.
To get the first insights on how we are going to get things up and running we'll look into books as the anti-aging plan, Joel Fuhrman's Eat to live, the Okinawa-program (you may first rent them from the library and review them to save expenses). In addition, we may once again look to our PESwiki page and review to some of the examples given by other self-sufficient/autonomous buildings (eg the Integral Urban House, ...). You may finally also take a look at my own food-production set-up from the zip file added at step 1 and 6. (see autonomous home system-map), Finally, we'll also take a look at a working example from another professor from our Instructable-labs which has created a working example.
In addition, we will measure our caloric requirements and optimal weight. We may do so by skinfold measurements, densiometry, and/or bioelectrical impedance analysis. With these, we can perfectly dimension our food system to generate no more produce than required, or we can use it to know how much food/nutrients to obtain from dumpsters, ... (calories are always mentioned on the labels). Usually, no more than 2000 kcal are required for a normal person per day and a BMI of 17.7 (which too was Ghandi's BMI) may be sufficient. In addition, we will look ahead and remind ourselves that if we would like to go live in a tropical/subtropical country (see step 5), the amount of meals or caloric content of the food is to become lowered (this, as our calorie requirements will be less due to a increased ambient temperature) and that we are to wear more clothing instead. Note that dressing up better and/or decreasing our meals may also be done in favor of the environment (and/or our wallet). This as it allows us to decrease our energy requirements and or the amount of space heating we require. This concept is also much applied by the homeless (true survival experts!), and as such, we may rest assured that it works.
An alternative to the food production system may also be to start plain dumpster diving, foraging or other subsistance techniques and/or use organic material found in the city dumpsters to vermicompost and provide our foodplants with high-grade fertiliser (make sure you have permission). Note that aldough all of these latter techniques will allow us to decrease costs and attain environmental benefits, they will not provide some of the other advantages noted with the home food production system.
After a month or so, we'll have figured out what foods we like and we'll return on this topic (unless offcourse you are opting for the alternatives noted as plain dumpster diving, ...).
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