Healthy Diet vs Eating Local

Whole-wheat pasta

One of the things I love about Germany is healthy foods can be found everywhere with many options and competitive price with the ‘sinful’ ones.  What I mean by healthy foods are like organic foods or low calorie/ less sugar foods.  In Indonesia, these foods can only be found in big cities and the prices are generally expensive.

In the place where I worked before going to Germany, Berau, like other places in Indonesia, there are so many tasty sinful foods.  Most of the foods are fried or with coconut milk or consists of internal organs.  Yummy!  I really loved it.  But then I had to face the awful truth, my cholesterol level is higher than expected.  I am now in a yellow zone of cholesterol level!!!

Vegetarian sausage

So, having the wake-up call, I have to be more serious in taking care of myself, and I am grateful that I am in Germany now.  I can really stop my poor eating habit and start something new.  I start eating salad mainly and leave the fried stuffs.  I also don’t eat anything from flour except if it’s a whole-wheat product.  I drink low fat milk and adding my green tea consumption.

Salad

To add more value on what I eat, I also look for organic foods.  Organic foods not only good for my health but also for the environment.  But then there’s also a twist for this option.  As an environmentalist, one of the trends now is eating local which means eating food from local ground and not imported from other places.  Because imported foods mean consuming much fuel for the transportation.  And this is the ‘problem’ with foods in Germany.  A lot of (if it’s not most of) the foods are imported.  For example this banana, it’s imported from Costa Rica!  The salmons are mostly from Norway.  So I don’t know if it’s still considered as healthy foods cause most likely there’s preservative in it…

Salmon from Norway

Banana from Costa Rica 

And if I want to be a good environmentalist, eating local food, probably I have to eat Kartoffelsalat every day!  Ooowwhhh… why healthy doesn’t mean tasty… L