By Sophie Egan

At least a third of Americans under 45 aren’t having kids or are having fewer kids because of the climate crisis. I get it, no question, except in many ways the logic is all wrong: Because the minute you bring a child into the world, you actually have a stake in the game. Odds are you care more about the fate of the planet and are more motivated to do something to save it than those taking the fatalist view. What that looks like in practice might include major investments like solar panels or electric stovetops, taking the bus to work or school, or spending your family vacation road-tripping to a national park rather than taking a long-distance flight. But are your kids involved in those decisions? They can probably get on board, pun intended, with the public transportation conversations, but less so the home improvement or renewable energy choices. Simply put: One of the most overlooked and yet most impactful areas for daily climate action is the food you and your family eat. 

The vast majority of grocery store products and menu options for children in America are what you might call "plant-backward" (or "animal-forward"): the opposite of climate-friendly.

As parents, grandparents, and caregivers in 2024, we have an incredible opportunity to train the taste buds of this next generation to be more intuitively and more automatically sustainable. In short, it's time for climate-friendly kid food!

In a 10-part series of essays starting next edition, you’ll learn why this must change, what it means to be climate-conscious when eating, and why the very notion of kid food is all wrong in the first place. We’ll cover topics of eco-anxiety, picky eating and its links to biodiverse eating, the sheer ubiquity of meat and cheese in the landscape of kids’ menus, and the definitions of "climate-friendly" and "kid food" to begin with. Each essay focuses on one topic and offers 3 concrete steps that any parent, grandparent, or caregiver can take — 3 genuinely doable things, not pie in the sky, and not at the sacrifice of convenience, flavor, or cultural relevance. Just practical ideas for getting your kids excited about delicious ways to save the planet. 

Join us as we dive into the most top-of-mind topics to help you meal plan, shop, cook, and order in simple, sustainable ways–from choosing plant-forward foods, reducing food waste, and minimizing single-use plastics and packaging, to sustainable seafood, “less meat/better meat,” and regenerative agriculture. We’ve got you covered for all of it and much more -stay tuned for the first essay in next month’s Climate Kitchen!

🍴 Our Food Values

What does climate-friendly food even mean, we hear you wondering? At Climate Kitchen, we created a value system we could stand behind. Climate-friendly food is: plant-forward, responsibly produced (and packaged!), real food that tastes great, fits your family needs, and won’t be wasted. In future issues, we’re going to be expanding on every part of this as we build this community. Less rulebook than general blueprint, it’s a living, breathing value system that we will continue to refine and evolve with all of you!

💡 Good Reads Roundup of the Month

✅ The Child-Nutrition Myth That Just Won’t Die: The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang explores the controversial practice of hiding vegetables in children's favorite foods, weighing the short-term benefits against potential long-term consequences for developing healthy eating habits.

✅ Food as You Know It Is About to Change: The New York Times launched a series about the food and climate connection. The first essay ‘Food As You Know Is About To Change’ by climate change writer David Wallace-Wells is worth your time.

✅ I Went a Week Without Ultra-Processed Foods. Here’s What I Learned: The Guardian’s Cecelia Nowell documents her personal journey of eliminating ultra-processed foods for a week, grappling with the challenges of finding affordable and accessible alternatives while weighing the potential health benefits against socioeconomic barriers.

🍳 Non-Toxic Kitchen: Pans Sans PFAS

Food & Wine tested loads of non-toxic cookware brands and picked out the 6 best brands that met all their criteria:

• ✔️ Strong performance — if it doesn’t work well, what’s the point?

• ✔️ Clean easily — because no one’s got time for endless scrubbing!

• ✔️ Good quality — buy well and buy less.

• ✔️ Nice to look at — don’t we all want a pretty kitchen ;)

TAKE A PEEK

🎤 Favorite Pod of the Month: Pressure Cooker — Guide for Climate-Smart Cooking

We LOVE the ladies at Pressure Cooker — it feels like we are listening to our own friends having a chat about OUR lives, AKA messy, busy, and full of unwilling climate compromises. In this episode, veteran journalist-hosts Jane Black and Liz Dunn tackle climate-smart cooking in their signature style (a blend of common sense and kindness), which is what Climate Kitchen is all about. Super helpful tips that are realistic and conceived for parents! Ideal commute listen.

ADD TO YOUR PLAYLIST

✅ What’s Coming: Climate-Smart Choices

Being a parent means navigating a dozen buying choices a day, sometimes hundreds per month. It’s overwhelming, confusing, stressful…and that’s before you add in being climate-friendly. A key part of our mission at Climate Kitchen is to help you make those choices—see our co-founder Sophie’s ‘A Guide to Climate-Conscious Grocery Shopping’ as an example. We want to be your go-to voice as you navigate the grocery store aisle in person or on your smartphone—the one that says “choose this, instead of that.” We’ll even share specific brands and products we love—always with full transparency on why we trust them and how we know them. Our aim is always to make life easier for y’all and create impact along the way.

🙏🏽 A big thank you to creative talent and friend Aditi Rajagopal for creating our wonderful Climate Kitchen logo- we love it and we are so grateful! It’s not easy to start something new and we are grateful to folks like Aditi who have helped make this a reality.