Today’s Healthy Friday comes for Lisa Corrado of Lisa Corrado Nutrition.
We’re exploring ways to make your diet greener which is better for your health and better for the environment. This week’s topic is Eating Locally.
What does it mean to eat “locally”? Does it mean eating only from your neighbor’s vegetable garden? Well, if your neighbor has a garden and an open-door policy, good for you! For the rest of us, it means knowing where our food is coming from and choosing those foods that are as close to home as possible.
Benefits of doing so include:
- Fresher and more nutritious food, because what we’re eating hasn’t spent days or weeks traveling to us, nutrients fading in the process.
- Reducing the energy needed to transport food to us, which reduces our damage to the environment.
And with the advances in transportation, it’s hard to know which foods are in season. In the dead of winter, people in the Northeast can eat fresh fruits from South America. Convenient? Yes. Good for us and the planet? Maybe not.
Fresh food transportation leads to one of my pet peeves: fruits & vegetables that aren’t ripe when we buy them. It makes sense that ripe produce won’t last long and won’t travel well. So many things are harvested before they’re ripe and then shipped, the ripening to happen (or not) in the store. One of the downsides is food that doesn’t have all of the flavor it should.
What To Do
- Read the signs and stickers on your produce before you buy them, and choose those that are closest to where you live. If you don’t see any information, ask the grocer.
- Rely on frozen fruits & vegetables if you live in an area that doesn’t have a growing season in the winter. Yes, they’ll travel to you, but they’ll be fresher and riper than non-frozen produce.
- Shop at local farmers markets. This not only gets you the freshest produce, it’s educational and fun. Get to know some of the farmers. This builds your community and teaches you more about what you’re eating. Ask for their recommendations on what’s best that day and how to prepare it. Bring your kids, especially if they’re veggie-averse. Introducing your kids to the farmers will have a positive impact on how they (your kids) eat.
In a perfect world, we each live on farms that provide everything our diet needs. In the real world, it’s important to make the best choices possible.
Lisa Corrado of Lisa Corrado Nutrition is a stellar chef and nutritionist. She is on a mission to help busy people eat healthier. Lisa offers nutritional counseling and coaching to help you cook and plan better meals. Check out her blog, A Moment in a Busy Life, which takes you on a healthy journey through good food and great choices.
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