Striving to Be a Locavour: Eat Locally Grown Produce

A locavour is a person who chooses to reduce his or her carbon foot-print while enhancing his or her health by eating what is fresh and local instead of what is brought in from outside of the area where they live. The transportation of food across many miles increases the carbon footprint of your consumption. Foods traveling in the frozen state uses even more energy to get to your table producing even more carbon in their trip. By rail, truck, boat or airplane, fuel is used and carbon is released to move the remotely grown produce from the field to the table. Shorten that distance and you lessen the fuel and the carbon release.

Food looses a portion of its nutritional value in transit, especially if it is forced to ripen in containers on long highways or on boats. Foods that are vine ripened are healthier than those that were forced to ripen in ripening enhancing containers. The pre-transport prep is reduced with local fresh foods so there is a minimum of energy used before you bring the food into the kitchen, no canning, no cans, no jars and no packaging nor electricity for freezing. Food stored for the long term, either frozen or canned looses flavor and texture to the freezing process. Compared to that produce picked and brought directly to the kitchen and table frozen or canned foods taste drab and flab, froznn and canned food looses much of it's firmness to the processing.

Vegetables that are bred for long keeping in transit are not bred with taste or texture in mind; they are bred for their stack ability and long shelf life. Those products that are grown locally are varieties that are chosen for choice taste and texture when they are first picked, long hauls stacked in the back of a tractor-trailer are not even thought of when these lush gems are cultivated.

Eating locally grown foods means eating fresher foods, the consumer therefore gains all of the advantage of that fresh produce for his or her health at a minimum of cost to the environment. There is some thought that locally grown foods actually reduce the incidence of allergies to the local air born pollens, the jury is still out on that, but it might be worth consideration if you suffer with allergies.

Another advantage to eating locally is that the foods taste better fresh picked than if they languished in a container for a week or two to get to your table. If you have ever experienced the flavor of a fresh picked vine ripened tomato, a farm fresh ear of corn boiled minuets after picking, or a fresh vine ripened melon than you know how true this is. Ask any chef, food just tastes better when it is allowed to ripen as nature intended it to before it is brought fresh to the table.

Eat well, eat fresh, eat locally.