From Scratch is a Greener Way to Eat

In her quest to become more environmentally friendly, Enviro Girl has given up the “Box Mix” and individually wrapped snacks.

That’s right, she’s baking it and making it from scratch more and more these days.  Why is that a “greener” way to eat?  What makes cooking from scratch a more environmentally friendly choice?

1.  Less packaging.  Whether it’s Rice Krispie treats (individually wrapped, then packaged in a  cardboard box) or a cake mix, convenience foods use more packaging.  Enviro Girl finds she can buy flour, sugar, eggs, baking soda, baking powder, corn meal, corn starch and salt in recyclable paper packaging.  She can buy vanilla, vegetable oil, milk and almond extract in recyclable or returnable packaging.  The plastic packaging on Twinkies, Oreos and muffin mix is not recyclable.  Enviro Girl generates less waste by preparing food from scratch.

2.  Less expensive.  In general, it costs the same to make cookies from scratch or buy a box made by the Keebler Elves.  The same can be said of cakes.  But consider this:  on NexTag a 20-count box of individually wrapped Rice Krispies Treats costs $10.82.  A family-sized box of Rice Krispies costs less than $5 and a bag of marshmallows costs about $1.  Add the cost of 2 teaspons of butter/margarine and grease for your pan and you spend less than $4 to make them from scratch.  Many “convenience” snacks and treats cost much more than the scratch versions.

3.  Healthier and known ingredients.  Enviro Girl cannot even pronounce some of the ingredients in the box mixes.  Take a look–here’s the ingredient list off a box of Betty Crocker Wild Blueberry Muffin Mix:

Ingredients: Enriched Flour Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Blueberries Canned In Light Syrup (Blueberries, Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Modified Corn Starch, Vital Wheat Gluten, Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Salt, Propylene Glycol Monoesters of Fatty Acids, Mono and Diglycerides, Corn Starch, Maltodextrin, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Citric Acid, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Artificial Flavor, Modified Cream.

To this you’d add milk, vegetable oil and eggs from your own kitchen.

Enviro Girl is rather fond of the  Blueberry Muffin recipe in her Pillsbury Cookbook:

Ingredients: 2 Cups all purpose flour, 1/2 Cup sugar, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3/4 Cup milk, 1/3 Cup oil, 1 egg, 1 Cup fresh or frozen blueberries.

Whether you’re making blueberry muffins using the mix or from scratch, you still dirty a bowl and spoon by mixing the ingredients and you still have to bake them in a muffin tin at 400 degrees for 18 minutes.  The big difference is that scratch muffins taste fresh and authentic and Enviro Girl uses ripe berries from a farm that goes light on the pesticides and herbicides.  And she can pronounce all of the ingredients in the scratch recipe, she knows they are healthy and knows they are safe.

4.  Avoid allergic reactions.  Enviro Girl’s son has a buddy with a serious peanut allergy.  By making after-school treats from scratch when he comes over, she can insure a peanut-free snack.  No trace of peanuts, no peanut-contaminated utensils or dishes touching the snack.  Preparing food from scratch means Enviro Girl can know for certain each ingredient her family and friends are ingesting.  She can avoid ingredients like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and cottonseed oil and food dyes.

For all these reasons, Enviro Girl feels scratch is the way to go to keep her family and her planet healthy.