Salad na gulay in your regular diet isn’t just good for your own personal well-being. It turns out that a Planetary Health Diet (PHD) is also good for the nation’s economy.
What is a PHD?
It is a plate of food comprised of 50% fruits and vegetables with the rest for proteins and unsaturated fats.
What Your Lolo and Lola Ate
The PHD lends itself to returning to our roots in traditional, regional cooking based on the seasonality and moderation of ingredients. Fruits and vegetables are minimally processed – eaten fresh, steamed or, preserved in vinegar. Different kinds of meat weren’t everyday things you could order in excess at the click of an app. So offal and meat on the bone from sustainable livestock farming were valued.
Your Plate and the Local Economy
With rice tariffication laws and the huge risk and cost of transporting meat products, advocating for vegetable crops helps farmers shift to less capital-intensive produce with a greater return on investment.
What’s a Young Professional To Do?
We have some suggestions to get you on that salad na gulay habit that will help you create staples on a fixed budget while avoiding food waste.
- Find a steady source source of salad vegetable ingredients in amounts you can consume. We recommend greens like spinach, kale, arugula and carlo rossa that you can prepare in a variety of ways and mix with other ingredients. A regular salad delivery subscription also helps if you’re time poor with a bigger budget.
- Stock up on salad dressing ingredients like mustard, olive oil, sesame oil, balsamic vinegar. Other items you can mix with your salad na gulay include pantry staples like salt, pepper, onions, garlic and sesame seeds. You can also test your palette with one or two other spices like cumin or turmeric.
- Get at least one set of reusable containers and utensils so you can enjoy the salad in the office. Go back to old school cool and bring your own tumbler or water jug, baonan or airtight container and utensils (metal or bamboo).
If you want to practice self-care and while supporting local farmers and helping the Philippine economy, a salad na gulay is a good way to start.
Take that first step by subscribing to Good Food Community’s salad pack today. Each pack gives you a 500 gram mix of salad greens and a sprinkling of hearty veggies that can be eaten raw.
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