PB&J your way to a better planet
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- July
- 22
Who knew that by making Pumpkin a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I’m not just feeding her a protein-packed lunch but helping the planet?
That’s the message of the PB&J Campaign, which exhorts the environmentally minded among us to pass up the chicken salad: “You recycle. You choose organic. You conserve energy. Now take at-home environmentalism to the next level.”
The idea, of course, is that plants like peanuts and strawberries and wheat take less energy, water and land to turn into food compared to livestock like cows and pigs.
It turns out that every day you eat a PB&J for lunch instead of a hamburger or grilled cheese, you save the same amount of carbon dioxide — about 2.5 pounds worth — that you would if you drove a Prius, according to the campaign. Eating just five PB&J sandwiches a month saves so much water that it’s like installing a low-flow showerhead.
The goal of the campaign is to get people to eat lunches that don’t include meat, fish, eggs or dairy products. Of course, that means any plant-based meal would work the same way as a PB&J. That makes it work even for those families who have a child with a food allergy. In my household, we particularly like humus with cucumber slices as well as tabouli. (As well as PB, of course, as you can see by this snapshot of Pumpkin gobbling a slice of whole wheat smeared with the sticky stuff.)
For those of us who can eat nuts without any side effects except too many calories, PB&J does seem like a friendly food to market as an alternative to the meat-based lunch. If you’re looking for a fun alternative to the traditional PJ&B, you can get some inspiration from the folks at Peanut Butter & Co. in Manhattan. When my husband and I visited their restaurant in Greenwich Village (at 240 Sullivan St.), several years back, we had a lot of fun trying unusual sandwich combinations with peanut butter. Since then, the company has started marketing jars of its peanut butter in stores, so you can try flavors like Mighty Maple, Dark Chocolate Dreams or Cinammon Raisin at home.
What do you think: Are you ready to sink your teeth into gooey goodness to help the Earth?
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 3:45 pm by Julie Moran Alterio.
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I hate peanut butter and jelly.
I’m all for ‘saving the earth,’ whatever that means, but I think this whole campaign has reached the point of absurdity if people actually believe that eating something different is going to have an effect on anything.
Squeaky wheel. people need to be vocal. if you want change, we need to make it. Issues such as these tend to distract us from bigger issues. how bout saving our houses from the Govt? eminent domain? already many people further north have lost property and homes. If eating PB&J would keep Govt from trampling our rights, i’ll eat it everyday!