Eumind report - my green meal

Natalie, Jessie, Cherine, Eva H & Sabela A3a.

Introduction: (Jessie)
This is our introduction video, to get to know us a bit better: https://youtu.be/4VO4W1cQ1iI

Research:
● What do the people of our group eat on a daily basis:
Natalie:
- Breakfast: fruit smoothie bowl
- Snack: dark chocolate
- Lunch: wraps/eggs/sandwiches
- Dinner: rice or pasta with a source of protein and veggies
- Dessert: fruit or ice cream

Eva H:
- Breakfast: bowl of fruit/oatmeal/ toast
- Snack: milk chocolate or fruit
- Lunch: avocado toast with caramelised onions
- Dinner: very variate. Examples: pasta, rice, Asian etc.

Sabela:
- Breakfast: most of the time I just eat cereal with milk
- Snack: fruit and protein bar
- Lunch: some sort of sandwich or sometimes leftovers.
- Dinner: I eat a lot of French/ Western cuisine, so like pasta etc.

Cherine:
- Breakfast: cheese toast
- Snack: chips/cookies/chocolate
- Lunch: wraps/a salad
- Dinner: variaties a lot. Examples: Moroccan food, pizza, Asian.

Jessie:
- Breakfast: soy yogurt with cruesli
- Snack: fruit and nuts
- Lunch: bread with avocado, lettuce tomato
- Dinner: vegetable soup/greens/vegan pasta
 ● Devise meals for one day: (Natalie)
- Breakfast: Homemade smoothie bowl
- Snack: Homemade potato oven crisps
- Lunch: Buddha bowl
- Dinner: Homemade falafel
- Dessert: Homemade popcorn

● Trying out a green meal with my family: (Sabela)

Together with my dad I prepared a delicious green meal. We cooked some penne pasta with
spinach sauce and added a few tomatoes. Everybody liked the food and we’ll definitely eat it
again. I would say it was a bit cheaper because for example meat is more expensive. The
vegetables were maybe the price of the meat or even less. So it was cheaper. It was a nice
experience preparing and eating a green meal!

● Explain how your food contributes to the emission of CO2. What factors
should be taken into accounts if we want to calculate this emission? (Eva
H)
I first asked this question to one of the students in India, her name is Kamladevi. This was her
answer:

However researchers found that the environmental impact of different food varies hugely.
Their findings show that meat and other animal products are responsible for more than half
of food related greenhouse emission despite providing only a fifth of the calories that we eat
and drink.

I also answered the question, this is my opinion:

I think that we need to calculate for a week what we eat, and how much it contributes to
global warming. Then we should have look at that and consider what we can do to prevent
how much we contribute to meals that have a cause on global warming.
If it is too high, we need to take care of buying stuff that is better for the environment.

I took charge of what I ate in a day and looked up how much my meals contribute to global
warming. You can look this up via a site, this is the site; http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/. So
here is the food I ate yesterday:
- Breakfast: fruit bowl or oatmeal with cinnamon and banana -> 84 carbon or 250
carbon
- Snack: some chocolate -> 277 carbon
- Lunch: avocado toast with caramelized onions, home made-> 200 carbon
- Snack: fruit -> 84 carbon
- Dinner: it is very varied. Pasta, Indian, lasagna. All homemade -> lasagna: 1022
Indian: 5000
Communication:
● Methods/ research activities: (Natalie)
The first method we made use of was just interviewing the Indian kids through text. And
interviewing my own group members through a video call. Besides that I also observed some
of my group members.

● Interviews: (Natalie)
Interview 1:
Name: Kamladevi
Age: 13
Date: 2 February 2021

Question 1: What kind of snacks do you like to eat that aren’t bad for the environment, but
still delicious?
Answer:
Popcorn is one of my favourites, it isn’t just a buttery delicacy to eat at the movies - it can
also be a healthy and sustainable snack if you make it yourself. You get some corn seeds and
put it in a heated pan with oil and later you add in salt and butter. If wanted you can also add
spices or honey to add extra flavor.

In addition another delicious and healthy snack which a lot of people didn’t know can be
healthy is ice cream! Yes you heard that right. As long as you don’t over do it, ice cream
actually has some good nutrients in it, like calcium and protein. Other than that there is a lot
of fruit based ice cream, which of course speaks for itself. Fruits are always delicious and
packed with vitamins!

I also really enjoy dark chocolate. it has many benefits and definitely if it isn’t processed or
full of sugar.

Both of the last options can be sustainable snacks if you make them yourself or buy them in a
local supermarket that doesn’t sell any/a lot of processed foods.
Interview 2:

Name: Jessie
Age: 14
Date: 2 February

Question 1: What is your daily diet and how is it sustainable/ good for the environment?
Answer:
My daily diet: I eat vegan, that means that I don’t eat any animal products. (Milk, cheese,
meat etc.) I have made this big change in my diet for various reasons:
- Help the environment and in that sense reduce the carbon footprint in the atmosphere.
That carbon footprint is created by the greenhouse effect. Which is caused by the
atmospheric accumulation of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which
contain some of the heat emitted from Earth's surface. The atmosphere allows most of
the visible light from the Sun to pass through and reach Earth's surface. This is a
natural process but when extra gasses are released into the atmosphere this causes a
problem: the sun rays can still get through the atmosphere, but not enough of them
can go back in space. Not allowing enough heat to escape from the earth’s surface and
heating the earth up. Resulting in global warming. These extra greenhouse gases are
created by humans. Most of the gasses come from the meat/cattle industry. Going
vegan doesn’t support the polluting meat and dairy industries. Thus is better for the
environment.

The environment is one of the main reasons I went vegan.

 ● My own Family: (Natalie)
My name is Natalie Chervet and I’m going to talk about how my family and I eat in order to
remain healthy, non-polluting diet and I will talk about other subjects within the idea of green
meals which me and my family contribute to. First of all we don’t eat as much meat as we
used to. Most of the time we eat meat about 2-3 times per week. The reason for this is briefly
explained in the second interview. Besides that we never throw away any leftovers. We
simply store it in a tupperware and save it for later. We do this in order to prevent waste of
food. Which is both good for saving money and the environment. We try to buy the least
amount of plastic packaged food and we recycle as much as possible.

I have talked about this subject with my Dutch group members and most of the things my
family does in order to have a positive impact on the environment applies to their families as
well.
 ● Communicating and keeping in touch with the Indian students: (Eva H)
We only had a call with all our fellow students and the teachers.
During the chatting online via WhatsApp. We first started to introduce each other and later on
they started to ask us some questions. We also asked some questions for the assignment. The
questions they asked were mainly about what we do to prevent a bad environment on the
production of food, for example fresh greens from the market.
Below are some pictures of the chat:
Reflection:
We have learned that the cattle industry strongly contributes to the warming up of the earth.
Going vegan could help solve a lot of the problems regarding global warming. Going
vegetarian could also help. Another thing you could do is make your own snacks, instead of
buying it at the store. For instance, you could make your own chips or your own vegan
brownies. This is a healthier and greener option. (By Jessie)

● Reflection of the group members:

Jessie:
I have been eating vegan meals for about 2 to 3 months. My father has been eating vegan
meals for about a year now. It was nice to have someone in the house who is also vegan. I
have been educating myself on the topic of veganism, and also on the topic of global
warming. However, it was still quite enjoyable to share my information I already knew
during the interview with Natalie. I also still found and learned a lot of new information
about the topic and about sustainable eating. For instance, I gained more knowledge about the
working of greenhouse effect. Moreover, I enjoyed doing research for this project.

I had put together the numbers of the kids from India. In the Whatsapp group, the students
from India started with asking us questions about our diet and how we could make that more
sustainable. As a result, it was also easier for our group to ask them some questions about the
topic. There were some differences in our answers. On the other hand, there were also
similarities. One example is in the interview with Kamladevi. Personally, our ideas match
about food, such as the health benefits of dark chocolate. In my opinion, I think we had good
communication, despite the slightly stiff start. Overall, the exchange of information with the
students from India went well.

Eva:
Throughout the project of EUMIND I learned a lot. For instance, the difference in our work
and in India. I noticed this when we were video calling with them. We in the Netherlands did
not really prepare for the call with India. In contrast to them, they really had deep going
questions and even sang a song for us. We on the other hand didn’t really ask any questions.
This call was with our class and the class in India. This was the time when we started to
realise that we needed to do something. So we made a planner and we decided the phases.
We had a little contact, but in the contact we had we asked other questions. We did this by a
WhatsApp group chat. This was with the group about green meals in India and Holland. I
asked a few questions about what they eat and how much CO2 emissions it has. They asked a
lot. About what we eat and how many calories there are in it. I also learned the difference in
the type of food we eat. I did not know that the people in India pretty much try to eat
vegetarian. But overall it was a pretty big assignment, but I learned a lot.
Natalie:
In this assignment I learned different things, from green meals to teamwork. When it comes
to green meals and pro environmental diet I learned a lot from the interview which I did with
Jessie and Kamladevi. From Jessie’s interview I learned a lot about the benefits/ reasons of
going vegan. And how the meat industry heavenly contributes to the greenhouse effect and
the heating of the earth. Jessie went vegan a few months ago and told me all about how much
it has helped her and the environment. It really inspired me to try to eat more vegan meals
and maybe someday, I will go vegan as well! Kamladevi gave me a lot of good ideas for
healthy, sustainable and of course enjoyable snacks. She told me that even popular foods
which normally aren’t very beneficial to your health or the environment can be turned into
green delicious snacks by just making it yourself. This is something that I will definitely be
doing the upcoming time.

As we all know we are in a lockdown right now. Which means that you can’t go to school to
meet your group members and make the assignment together. This challenged us to many
different things: making a very clear task sheet, FaceTiming when everyone has time, and
every time you have a question go on your phone and wait for a response instead of asking it
in class. Though all of these things pushed us to communicate with each other very clearly
which helped with having good teamwork.

Overall I think that the project went pretty well and that the teamwork of our group was good.
There are a few little things which I -personally- could have done differently. For instance,
making a better planning of when I’m going to do what and how I will execute it. Other than
that I liked how this project went for both me and my group.
Cherine:
I think this was a very exciting project. We talked to people from other countries and we had
conversations with them. Due to this we could learn a lot from their environment and
compare it to ours. I always wondered how some things went in other countries, for example
how food is produced or what people eat there oftenly. In this project we discovered this. In
the interview, we interviewed Kamladevi. She gave examples of delicious alternative
food/snacks that are healthy, I will use those examples! In phase three we asked, “Explain
how your food contributes to the emission of CO2. What factors should be taken into account
if we want to calculate this emission?”. Kamladevi answered “However researchers found
that the environmental impact of different food varies hugely. Their findings show that meat
and other animal products are responsible for more than half of food related greenhouse
emission despite providing only a fifth of the calories that we eat and drink.” My groupmate
Eva also answered this question; “I think that we need to calculate for a week what we eat,
and how much it contributes to global warming. Then we should have a look at that and
consider what we can do to prevent how much we contribute to meals that have a cause on
global warming.
If it is too high, we need to take care of buying stuff that is better for the environment.” The
things Kamladevi said were true and Eva gave a proposal that I personally fully support. In
this way we can easily see when global warming is increasing. Furthermore, I think we
maybe could’ve gotten more in-depth answers from India because in this way we could
compare things more.

Sabela:
I learned a lot by doing this assignment. I know things I didn’t know before, doing this
project. For example: How to eat more green by adding vegetables or fruit. I replace my
meals more often with vegetables instead of meat. I learned it’s better to eat less meat
because the process has a lot of CO2 emission. Another thing I found out is that vegetables
are very good for your daily nutrition (another reason to eat more vegetables :). I found it
interesting to do research about green meals and I have learned much as you probably read
above. I ate a green meal with my family and that was very nice. We made it easy but it was
still delicious. Everyone liked it so we'll probably make it again. I did also inform my parents
about eating more green by adding vegetables in meals. Together we looked at recipes for
more green meals we could eat on another day. We also had a Whatsapp group chat with the
Indian students and asked each other questions. We got to know more things about how they
think about the environment in India. And how they fix environmental problems. We divided
all the phases among everyone. The group communication went well so that helped a lot (in
this pandemic). To conclude it was a very nice assignment and to have other points of views
of different people.

To conclude…
This was our report about green meals. We hoped you have learned more about
sustainable eating and green meals. We certainly did.