Healthier Bodies, Healthier Planet: Eating Local

After visiting the farmers market on Thursday I was thinking that all the food I consume on a daily basis is not grown anywhere near Elon. My curiosity continued to grow and I was wondering about all the energy it took to get the food from the farm to my plate? I had never considered about how my food purchases might affect the food system.  The newly popular movement “eat local” has inspired conscientious consumers all over the country to reconsider how we can each improve the planet at meals. The issue has become so mainstream that TIME magazine published a cover story about it.

            I was naïve thinking that switching to an organic diet was just as effective as eating locally. Sadly, I was mistaken food that is produced organically still travels hundreds of miles to reach my plate. On the food’s journey to my plate it emits pollutants in the air and burnings copious amounts of fossil fuels. When starting to research consuming locally produced food I found a definition that pretty much sums up why one would eat locally. It comes from Columbia’s Gussow, a reporter for Time in the 1950s who eventually went on to become a local-eating pioneer. She has lectured on the environmental (and culinary) disadvantage of relying on a global food supply for 25 years. Her most famous statistic is that shipping a strawberry from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel but provides the eater with only 5 calorie of nutrition. I was SHOCKED by that alarming statistic and that’s only strawberries what about all the other food I consume. In her memoir, Gussow offers the meaning of local: “Within a day’s leisurely drive of our homes. [This] distance is entirely arbitrary. But then, so was the decision made by others long ago that we ought to have produce from all around the world.”

            We should want to eat locally not only for the environment but for our bodies and to support our community. Eating local is simple today there is information all over the internet with blogs telling where sells local produce and connects local eaters all over the world.  

To find local produce near you click on this link http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home