Clean, but not green: why clean-eating could be killing the planet

The wellness trend has created a moral halo around all things green and nutritious, but the unpalatable truth is that our appetite for so-called ‘superfoods’ is often to the planet’s detriment. Once we grabbed a cheese sandwich from the local food hall or café; now we have salads from Israel, quinoa from Peru and nuts from California. Our lunchboxes have never been so varied or posed such a threat to the planet.

Waitrose made headlines last year when sales of almond milk overtook those of soya milk — but don’t assume that’s a positive thing. ‘A lot of shop-bought almonds come from California and the issue is that as a crop they are draining local water supplies,’ says Joanna Blythman, investigative food journalist and author of Swallow This. The same goes for cashews, which, according to a 2014 Traidcraft report, are in some cases farmed in factories with ‘terrible working conditions’ in India for a daily wage of only £1.71, against the average of £9.61.

Kale may be so popular that in the US it has its own national day (3 October, FYI) but foraging for it has come under fire from conservation group Natural England, who claim that UK sea kale is being harvested in unsustainable volumes. Bagged, pre-washed and chopped supermarket kale also contributes to the global plastic waste problem and gulps down a huge volume of water, thanks to triple-washing processes by manufacturers.

Enjoy bulking out your salads with quinoa? In Peru and Bolivia locals have grown and eaten the pulse for centuries but now the market price has increased so much it’s cheaper to live off imported junk food. In Lima, quinoa now costs more to buy than chicken.

The solution, experts say, is not to give up clean foods, but to be conscious of where they come from. ‘There’s absolutely no excuse for Londoners to buy quinoa or kale from other countries,’ says Ben Pugh, 37, founder of FarmDrop, a sustainable online grocer which supplies locally grown fruit and vegetables to the capital. ‘We source our kale from a farm near Cambridge and our quinoa from Essex.’

Some foods can’t be grown in UK soil but eco-minded producers are finding ways to cut the impact they have on the planet. Health food brand Zaytoun grows almond trees in Palestine that are resistant to drought and need less water. Supermarkets are slowly cottoning on, too. You can now buy British-grown quinoa in Waitrose.

‘We had been looking to introduce a British quinoa for some time’ says Waitrose salad buyer Tom Moore, ‘and were thrilled when we finally found the right product.’

So how can we get it right? We all know we should be making greener choices but what does that really mean? It’s about changing the way we think about shopping, eating wisely, not mindlessly, and buying locally. One solution might be to download a sustainability app, like JouleBug, to help you make smarter choices. Or, why not investigate some of the recipes on websites such as sustainabletable.org, which will start you off on the right foot. And next time you upload your ‘clean-eating’ dishes on to social media, make sure that your virtuous diet doesn’t, in fact, cost the world.