Use this guide to take yourself on a green diet tour of your local markets. Shopping for "green" food choices when they're not common can seem a little like foraging in the woods for edible mushrooms and wild greens. Mothers & Others created the Ultimate Forager's Green Diet Tour as a way to help you find what you want in the store in which you regularly shop.

We've devised a typical store "map" and a fairly routine shopping trip in order to identify the food choices that will be both heathful and supportive of a more sustainable food system. Remember, the main theme of the tour is shopping for a green diet, so keep the "8 Simple Steps" in mind.

We want you to relax and enjoy yourself; think of scouring streambanks for lamb's lettuce even as your rummage beneath the flourescent lights of the produce aisle. Remember, your food choices in your supermarket, by supporting sustainable farming methods, will make a difference.

This tour should take about 25-30 minutes at a time. We'll take you through the following food departments.

--Produce
Nutritionally, fresh fruits and vegetables are the healthiest foods one can eat--the more the better. Except for avacados, they're all low in fat and most are packed with fiber, vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A & C. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recommends "5 (servings) A Day" of fruits and vegetables to help prevent cancer, heart disease and common digestive ailments.

But there's much, much more to picking out fruits and vegetables than meets the eye. As we make our choices we also need to ask ourselves how the produce is grown (conventionally versus organically or IPM), where it comes from, and whether it's in season. Pesticides can and do make their way into the "meat" of the fruit.

Washing and peeling
Washing and peeling will not get rid of all the pesticides. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to wash and peel to get rid of surface dirt and germs, and pesticides trapped under waxes or on the skin. Many fruits and vegetables are treated after harvest with chemicals to reduce deterioration and disease during storage and transport. Apples and potatoes, for instance are dipped in a chlorine/fungicide wash to kill fungal spores. Of course, the downside to peeling is that you remove many of the valuable nutrients and fiber that re found in or just under the peel.

Waxes