So, what deci­sions can we make to keep our­selves healthy as well as our planet?

It is the over­all diet rather than indi­vid­ual foods which are healthy or unhealthy, which is why I live by the mantra ​‘Eat a rain­bow’ – eat a range of fruit and veg­eta­bles of dif­fer­ent colours every day. Eat­ing a var­ied diet gives your body an array of essen­tial vit­a­mins and min­er­als. Healthy meals should include plen­ty of fruit and veg­eta­bles, whole­grains, puls­es or some meat, fish or dairy items (many of which you will be able to see grow­ing on LEAF Open Farm Sun­day on 27^th June).

Buy­ing food pro­duced to high envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, like those from LEAF Mar­que cer­ti­fied farms. These prod­ucts have been grown sus­tain­ably to high envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards by farm­ers who are reduc­ing their car­bon foot­print, improv­ing soils, min­imis­ing ener­gy use, reduc­ing waste, recy­cling prod­ucts and tak­ing active steps to boost bio­di­ver­si­ty. LEAF Mar­que farm­ers are deliv­er­ing cli­mate pos­i­tive action through resilient, nature-based farm­ing techniques.

It is great to have a wide choice of foods, but it is equal­ly impor­tant to plan meals to ensure you waste as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. Farm­ers spend months and years nur­tur­ing the land, grow­ing crops and car­ing for live­stock whilst pro­tect­ing and enhanc­ing the envi­ron­ment. If the food which they pro­duce, ends up in the bin, uneat­en, then the ener­gy used to pro­duce it has been wast­ed — the waste then pro­duces green­house gas emis­sions con­tribut­ing to cli­mate damage.

Cook­ing our meals from scratch using core ingre­di­ents, such as fruit and veg­eta­bles, meat and dairy prod­ucts, is a great way to ensure we are eat­ing health­ily and get­ting all of the essen­tial nutri­ents we need.

Choose cook­ing meth­ods that use less ener­gy, such as microwav­ing a jack­et pota­to instead of bak­ing it in the oven uses less ener­gy or boil­ing water for pas­ta in a ket­tle, rather than heat­ing up an open pan of water on the gas cook­er. UIT Cam­bridge Ltd. — Food and Cli­mate Change with­out the hot air

-Ends-

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact the LEAF Open Farm Sun­day Press Office at 
Ceres 01189 475 956 openfarmsunday@​ceres-​pr.​co.​uk

Editor’s notes:

• LEAF Open Farm Sun­day is man­aged by LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farm­ing) — the lead­ing organ­i­sa­tion deliv­er­ing and pro­mot­ing Cli­mate Pos­i­tive action, thriv­ing, resilient and exem­plar agro-eco­log­i­­cal farm­ing at an increas­ing­ly glob­al lev­el. Work­ing with farm­ers, the food indus­try, sci­en­tists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, teach­ers, young peo­ple and con­sumers we are look­ing at new ways to deliv­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty among our farm­ers, enrich the envi­ron­ment and engage young peo­ple and soci­ety in a valu­able and mean­ing­ful way. LEAF set up and has man­aged LEAF Open Farm Sun­day since it began in 2006. (LEAF is a reg­is­tered char­i­ty no: 1045781) 

• LEAF Open Farm Sun­day 2021 will take place on 27^th June 2021. If there are tighter restric­tions due to Covid, anoth­er dig­i­tal day of vir­tu­al farm tours will be organised. 

• Spon­sors of LEAF Open Farm Sun­day include: AHDB, Arla Foods, Asda, BASF, Co-op, Farm­ers Week­ly, Fron­tier Agri­cul­ture, John Deere, Kellogg’s, LEAF Mar­que, NFU, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

LEAF is a reg­is­tered char­i­ty (No. 1045781) and a com­pa­ny lim­it­ed by guar­an­tee reg­is­tered in Eng­land (No. 3035047).

About Bar­bara Bray

Bar­bara is a TEDx speak­er and direc­tor of her own con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness Alo Solu­tions Ltd dri­ving and deliv­er­ing food safe­ty in food sup­ply chains and help­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers with sus­tain­able nutri­tion strat­e­gy. She facil­i­tates SCOUT work­shops, a short and sharp tool used to enable food man­u­fac­tur­ers to focus on a key issue and use a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary group of con­sul­tants to find new approach­es to solve it.

Her lat­est ini­tia­tive is the Healthy and Sus­tain­able Food plat­form cre­at­ed with two fel­low con­sul­tants. It brings togeth­er peo­ple from sec­tors includ­ing finance, food indus­try, health, agri­cul­ture, phar­ma and edu­ca­tion to col­lab­o­rate on solu­tions for sus­tain­able nutri­tion. In con­junc­tion with Beanstalk Glob­al, 3 broad­casts have been made this year about healthy and sus­tain­able food. 

She has been run­ner-up in the Car­o­line Walk­er Trust award for Free­lance Nutri­tion­ist of the Year in both 2019 and 2020.