I chose the book, “Go Green Get Lean” by Kate Geagan, because it sounded appealing to me. As a new vegan, I am more interested in reading about the effects that fruits and vegetables can help our bodies and the benefits that outweigh the negatives of eating a plant based diet. However, the book was not all about going vegan. Kate Geagan, MS, RD, has appeared in magazines including Prevention, and Family Circle. She has been in the nutrition industry since 1999. Ms. Geagan explores the “inconvenient tooth” that most American meals have big feet, carbon feet that is. A carbon footprint is a way to assess the impact that a human activity has on the environment by figuring out how much carbon dioxide that activity produces. She then goes thru the diet of how we can reduce our footprint and get leaner, and healthier in the process. The main keys to starting this diet are: skipping beef and cheese for a couple weeks, eating sustainable healthy snacks more often, skipping sugars and artificial sweeteners and alcohol for 2 weeks; preparing meals at home, switching to organic/buying local foods, and getting educated on what kinds of fish are endangered.
“Go Green, Get Lean” was written in 2009. The issues are more serious today than they were then, so it’s more important now to be more mindful of the foods we consume and the carbon footprint we are leaving on the planet by consuming these types of foods. The book states that you should cut out eating beef and cheese for a couple weeks, because production of these products makes up for about 20% of greenhouse gases. MyPlate suggests that you should consume roughly 12 grams per serving of dairy a day, but that protein can be made up for. The diet