Choosing Local Food for Your Health and the Health of Your Community
by Lori Evesque
Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Lori Evesque’s article this month is the first in a series of three on the topic of food choices. After you read February’s piece, which provides an introduction to the benefits of local foods, look for her March article on the differences between local and organic products, and her April article on how to make the switch to local foods.
The trend toward eating locally grown foods for a majority of your diet has been in the news a lot lately and is gaining more adherents every day. In fact, the word “locavore,” defined as a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced food, has been named the 2007 word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. There are many positive reasons to eat locally produced and minimally processed foods for personal, environmental, and community health. How can we make that happen in the midst of our busy lives, when we seem to run from one activity to another, barely having time to open and heat up a “fresh” microwavable entrée picked up at the last minute from the new natural-health megastore? Can’t we get the same benefits from buying convenient processed foods as long as they are organic? The simple answer is no. The reasons come from the answers to these questions: 1) Why eat local foods? 2) Can local be healthier than organic? 3) How can we incorporate more local foods into our very busy lives? I will investigate the first question in this article and expand on the other two questions in articles that will appear in the CoSozo March and April newsletters.
Local foods? Organic foods? Whole foods? What’s the difference? The definitions below should help you differentiate between these terms—just remember that any given product can be any combination of local, organic, or whole (for example, local and organic, or organic and whole, or local and whole). In other words, just because something is organic, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a whole food—you get the picture. Local foods—These are foods purchased and consumed in close geographic proximity to the grower or producer. Proponents of local eating tout its sustainability and its reduced impact on the environment compared to that of foods that may not only consume resources during their production (as with highly processed foods), but also burn fuel during transport from one city or state or country to another. Local food tends to be fresher than food that has traveled many miles, and may in turn be higher in nutritional value. Local food may be organic, or it may not be. Local food can be processed or whole (bread made locally with local ingredients is a still a processed food). Organic foods—These include crops grown and processed without chemical pesticides, artificial fertilizers, sewage sludge, ionizing radiation, as well as animal products processed without growth hormones or the routine use of antibiotics. In the United States and many other countries, the production of large-scale-, supermarket-, processed-, (etc.) organic foods is regulated legally; however it’s important to recognize that foods can be organic and not regulated, because small- to medium-sized growers may not choose to obtain certification. Organic foods may be whole or processed. An organic food may be, for example, a fresh bag of organic carrots or a frozen organic microwave meal. Organic foods may be local, or may be transported many miles to your local supermarket. Whole foods—These are foods that are unprocessed and unrefined before being consumed. Whole foods typically do not contain added sugar, salt, fat, or chemicals. Processed foods that contain whole grains are still processed, but are a healthier choice than processed foods that do not contain whole grains. Whole foods may or may not be organic or local. |
What do I mean by “local food”? There are several books out now that define and promote local foods, and their authors have varying definitions of what it means to be local—that’s fine. One book, published in Canada as The 100-Mile Diet (and in the United States as Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally), by Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon, defines local as a 100-mile radius around the eaters’ home. Smith and MacKinnon tried for a year not to eat anything from outside that radius. As a consequence, they did not eat bread or other products containing wheat until seven months into their experiment when they found a local grower of wheat. Barbara Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, defines her family’s year of local eating as an attempt to “establish that a normal-ish American family could be content on the fruits of our local foodshed”(24). Their highest goal was to “get our food from so close to home, we’d know the person who grew it” (10). Kingsolver’s family also didn’t deprive themselves of all non-local foods, as each family member was allowed one free non-local food like coffee or chocolate. Common to most definitions is that local food is unprocessed or minimally processed, seasonal, and regional—meaning that consumers know much more about the origins of their food than they typically do about grocery-store food. The idea here is not to deprive yourself but to pay closer attention to the food you eat. Most people pay more attention to the condition of their cars than their food, often requiring only that food be cheap and plentiful. That attitude has resulted in a great upsurge in obesity, chronic disease, environmental degradation, and other issues. We need to pay more attention to our food for the sake of our own health, our communities’ health, and the health of our planet.
Why eat more locally grown foods? Eating locally grown foods is better for your health. The simple reason for this is that, as I indicated above, most foods grown locally are fresher, minimally processed if processed at all, and often consumed in season. Even if they are ultimately processed to be used later, they are picked and processed at the peak of ripeness and flavor. Most of the “fresh” produce at the grocery store was picked weeks before it appeared at your local store and was handled and processed, even if only to wash and bag (as is often the case with greens) numerous times; stored in climate- and sometimes atmospherically controlled environments; and transported many miles before appearing on the shelves. For each minute between harvest and consumption there are major losses of flavor and nutrients from the food. Also, many produce items have to be picked unripe to make handling and transportation possible and then have to be artificially ripened before being put on the produce shelves. Produce that is picked before it ripens naturally has vastly lower levels of nutrients, which reach their maximum when the item is allowed to ripen naturally on the plant. For example, studies have shown that lycopene and other important antioxidants in tomatoes are present in significantly higher quantities in ripe as opposed to unripe tomatoes—and are higher in vine-ripened as opposed to off-vine or artificial ripening. Also, newer varieties of many common fruits and vegetables appear to have lower levels of many nutrients now than in 1950. According to another study, in a comparison of 43 garden crops from 1950 and 1999, modern cultivars had significantly lower levels of six key nutrients including protein, riboflavin, calcium, phosphorus, iron, and vitamin C.
There have been numerous reports of contamination of foods sold in stores, as well as recalls of the contaminated products. Eating local foods can go a long way toward reducing the chances of food contamination. The recently reported occurrences of food contamination involved foods that were produced on a very large scale: bagged spinach, green onions, imported food products, ground meat, etc. Many of these contamination cases involved contamination by H5N1 E. Coli bacteria. This strain is becoming more and more prevalent and is seen often in the manure of grain-fed ruminants where the pH of the animals’ guts encourages the growth of dangerous strains of E. Coli. Eating locally can significantly reduce the risk of exposure to contaminated foods. According to Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the FDA, “Clearly the risk [of food contamination] is significantly reduced if you know the farmer and know his farm.” One of the best ways to ensure safe food is to get to know those who grow your food. Ask questions of the producers, visit their farms, ask other customers, and find out all you can about them. The secret here is this: if you are unhappy with the answers given, tell the farmer that you will not purchase his or her products until you are satisfied with the products and the conditions on the farm. This is something we have extremely limited opportunities to do when purchasing foods from large stores that purchase from large distributors that in turn purchase from large growers. There is very little responsiveness in such a large and complex system. The local food system, in contrast, relies on this close association between producer and consumer.
The produce sections of our modern supermarkets are a marvel; foods from all over the world and from all seasons are available. You can eat watermelon in January, asparagus in October, and Brussels sprouts in June. This all sounds wonderful, but nutritionists and environmentalists are beginning to believe that this smorgasbord may not be as good for us and our planet as we might think. Food that’s in season not only tastes better, but may contain ingredients that suit the body’s needs for that time of year; for example, summer fruits, with their high fluid content, are probably best eaten in hot weather when water loss from the body is highest. There is a misconception by many opponents to the notion of local eating that eating seasonally and locally will lead to a bland and ordinary diet. Contrary to that idea, seasonal eating can expose the consumer to a wide range of vegetable and fruit possibilities. A glance at any seed catalog can give you an idea of what could be available to the local eater. For example, spring is the season for eating shoots, leaves, and some early fruits and roots. Options include asparagus; early beets; radishes; broccoli; spinach; peas; spring onions; baby Swiss chard; kohlrabi; Asian greens like bok choy, mizuna mustard greens, tatsoi, shungiku (edible chrysanthemum); lettuce of many types such as endive, escarole, dandelion, arugula, and amaranth greens; and many others. If you peek into the refrigerator, freezer, and cupboard of the average supermarket-shopping modern family, chances are you will find a much-reduced array of vegetables! Diversity is not a problem for the local eater. It is true that in many areas of the world, the diversity of major crops being sown and sold on the commodity market is very narrow—corn, soybeans, wheat. But we are not talking about buying your food from commodity farmers.
From an environmental perspective, local eating has the potential to reduce the energy required to bring food to our tables. Many people have heard the comment that the average Caesar salad served in America has traveled more than 3,000 miles to reach the table. This comment may be a slight exaggeration but a study of transportation distances for fresh produce in 1980 determined produce travelled on average 1500 miles based on trucks to terminal markets from Florida and California. This was before a large percentage of our produce came from overseas markets. The food miles of most processed foods are even greater when you include the miles of all the ingredients getting to the processing plant, then the miles involved in getting the finished product to your shopping center and your home. All of this travel requires gasoline, diesel, or other petroleum products. The effects of global warming are becoming more and more apparent, and we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels if we are to limit the effects of climate change on our lives. One way to do this is to eat local foods. As the local food movement has become more of a mainstream idea, more people are contradicting the claim that eating local foods can reduce the use of fossil fuels. One of these talks about the cost of the carbon emissions involved with shipping grapes from Chile. The author also stated that the greatest impact on the environment comes from the automobile drive to the market. The assumption here is that consumers are still purchasing their food at the large supermarkets as part of the mass-distribution system. Most local food groups springing up across the country stress getting to know the people who grow your food where you will be purchasing food directly from the producer at markets or farm stands, or smaller grocers and by developing direct connections with farmers. Many groups of “locovores” are banding together to share information and sources, and make combined trips to suppliers to limit the car trips to collect the food. The claim that long distance transportation of food is more efficient than local food, thus less of an environmental burden fails to consider the hidden costs of pollution, habitat destruction, and low farm wages.
Eating more locally can be less expensive than relying on grocery-store offerings. Contrary to an increasingly common idea that the “locovore” movement is an elitist movement, available mostly to people of higher incomes, eating locally can save you money in the long run. As an example, Julie Cummins, the Director of Education for the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) ate locally and calculated her weekly food expenditure. She bought what she wanted (not necessarily the cheapest local foods) and found she spent almost exactly the same as the average American weekly expenditure for food.
The average consumer’s grocery cart contains a large percentage of processed foods. Processed foods are called “value-added” products for a reason. Selling a commodity or unprocessed product does not make the manufacturer or retailer a significant profit. Take bread as an example. The ingredients for a basic loaf of bread: wheat, butter, water, yeast, eggs, etc., are relatively inexpensive. Buying a good loaf of bread from a bakery, on the other hand, is considerably more expensive than buying the individual ingredients. The manufacturer and retailer are selling more than just the ingredients in the product. They are selling the convenience of having your bread, snacks, or whole meals completely prepared for you. Over many years, that convenience has come to be expected, and people have slowly forgotten how to cook. As we start to buy local, minimally processed foods, we have to relearn how to cook. Gradually, our confidence improves and we expand our cooking experiments to more and more foods. Time is precious, I know, but if we start with simple cooking and slowly increase our abilities, it is not an insurmountable task. I will be expanding further on how to transition to a local diet in the April article.
A final and less obvious reason for eating local foods is to decrease the stress on global plant and animal populations. You may be wondering what eating local vegetables and meat has to do with the populations of animals and plants elsewhere in the world, but bear with me. Doctors and nutritionists continually tell us that eating wild cold-water fish that are high in healthy omega-3 fatty acids is beneficial to our heart health. But the notion that all 6.5 billion—or even 3 billion— of the earth’s inhabitants can eat cold-water fish even once a week without the populations of these fish being affected is naïve at best. According to the Worldwatch Institute, up to three-quarters of the world’s fish stocks have been over-exploited, with many fisheries in states of collapse or nearly so. For too long, we have relied on experts to tell us how to find the nutritional components needed for a healthy life and body. You may wonder, how did people stay healthy when inland people couldn’t get a steady supply of salmon and tuna to keep their hearts healthy?
For a healthy body, we need to eat a diet with an omega-6:omega-3 fatty acid ratio of 1:1 to 3:1. For meat eaters, grass-fed beef and lamb have a ratio of 1-3:1, whereas grain fed cattle can have a ratio as high as 20:1. As a comparison, wild-caught salmon has an omega-6:omega-3 ratio of 2-3:1. Therefore, you can get your omega-3 fatty acids from local meats, reducing the effect on diminishing ocean-fish stocks and without the risks of heavy-metal contamination often found in fatty ocean fish. Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t have salmon, tuna, and other ocean fish; by all means, indulge on occasion, but remember that a varied local diet can give you all the nutrients you need for a healthy body.
Perhaps the most beneficial reason to eat local foods is the effect on the local community. Eating local foods introduces you, the consumer, to many people in your community. Studies in many parts of the country have determined that for every dollar spent on local foods, at least six times that is reinvested in the community. This reinvestment can be an important source of new jobs, new farms, and new companies of many kinds to support the needs of the farmers in the region.
I hope I have provided enough of an introduction to the benefits of local foods to inspire you to start thinking about how you might buy locally or perhaps investigate the sources of some of your favorite food items. Be sure to check out the March and April issues of the CoSozo Newsletter to learn more!
Additional Reading:
- http://www.foodroutes.org A national non-profit dedicated to reintroducing Americans to their food.
- http://www.localharvest.org/ Use this website to find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
- http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/buylocal/
- Kingsolver, B., Hopp, S. L., & Kingsolver, C. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.
- Lind, M. B. Simply in Season: Recipes That Celebrate Fresh, Local Foods in the Spirit of More-with-Less.
- Nabhan, G. P. Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods.
- Norberg-Hodge, H., Gorelick, S., & Merrifield, T. Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness.
- Pasanen, M., Cushner, S. (photographer), Silverman, J. (photographer). Cooking With Shelburne Farms: Food and Stories from Vermont.
- Petrini, C., Hunt, J. (trans.), & Furlan, C. Slow Food Nation: A Blueprint for Changing the Way We Eat.
- Salatin, J. F. Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front.
- Smith, A., & MacKinnon, J. B. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.
- Freidman, M., Kozukue, N. (2002). Tomatine, chlorophyll, ß-carotene and lycopene content in tomatoes during growth and maturation. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 83(3), 195-200.
- Arias, R., Lee, T.-C., Specca, D., Janes, H. (2000). Quality comparison of hydroponic tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) ripened on and off vine. Journal of Food Science, 65(3), 545-548.
- Davis, D., Epp, M., Riordan, H. (2004). Changes in USDA food composition data for 43 garden crops, 1950 to 1999. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 23(6), 669-682.
- Hendrickson, J. (2004). Energy Use in the U.S. Food System. Madison: University of Wisconsin.