“Imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we’re eating. Where it comes from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost.”
—Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
1½ cups fruit and 3–4 cups vegetables every day
(Power fruits and veggies pack lots of color: reds, orange, dark greens, blue/ purple)
All fresh fruits and vegetables (especially those that are in season and deeply colored)
Fresh leafy greens and salad greens (especially darker colors) and fresh and dried mushrooms
Frozen “naked” fruits and vegetables (no sauces or syrups)
Something grown in season locally, or that you grow yourself
Up to the farm gate, organic is greener. Go organic to the extent possible, but balanced with prudent transportation.
Try to minimize overpackaged products to the extent that you can while still sticking with your Prescription.
Up to 6 ounces 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice
¼ cup dried fruit
Canned tomatoes, artichokes, olives, roasted peppers, and pumpkin
Any juice or juice blend that isn’t 100 percent fruit or vegetable
Dried fruit with added oils or sweeteners
All other canned produce, especially those with added salt or in syrups/sauces
Fruit that has been flown on an airplane. (Typically that can include pineapples and other tropical fruits, as well as berries in wintertime. Ask your produce manager.)
If your diet consists mostly of lifeless, heavily processed and refined foods, odds are you, too, will feel lifeless. On the other hand, if your diet includes lots of vibrant foods teeming with nutrition and powerful enzymes, you too will feel more vibrant and alive. It’s that simple.
Many of my clients share the same problem: They simply don’t eat enough of these foods that can make them feel good, relying instead on “convenience,” ready-to-eat, overly processed junk. They don’t make the connection between what they’re putting into their bodies and what they’re getting in return.
Why am I telling you all of this now? Because this is the chapter where you truly make it happen. Here is where you begin shifting your plate to start experiencing health at the highest level. Here is where you discover the abundance of food that you can eat, that you should eat, while slimming down. Here is where you see firsthand how the right food choices can dramatically help the body heal from years (possibly decades) of bad food choices.
While all of my clients have different goals (an athlete seeks performance, a baby boomer wants to shed her “menopot” belly, a new mom wants to lose the baby weight), at the end of the day most of us are looking for the same thing—to feel and look our best. And the amount of produce you choose to include in your diet is the single biggest step you will take toward the body that you want.
In this era of quick fixes, pills and potions, of wanting to lose 10 pounds by last Tuesday, the immense power of plant foods is overlooked by most of us. But make no mistake. The produce aisle is where the power foods sit in the supermarket. If they represent an easy, low-tech, immediate way to begin creating better health and weight for yourself, they also offer an immediate, low-tech way to curb America’s massive global emissions coming from our food supply. Healing in every sense.
So eat more. A lot more. Starting now.
I get it all the time. When I am asked by clients or the media about which nutrients they should be pursuing, they look expectantly at me, imagining I am going to send them to the supplement aisle for some new exotic herb or undiscovered wonder pill, or to perhaps suggest that they subsist exclusively on cabbage soup and cayenne pepper. When I tell them to hit the produce aisle and load up on a variety of colors, they seem bored and deflated. They know that, but surely isn’t there something else? Something faster, easier, and, well, sexier than that?
In a nutshell, nope. And deep down, if you’re like most of my clients, you already know that. But you can hope, can’t you? Sure, but remember that hope is not a strategy. Not for changing our health, and certainly not for fixing our climate crisis. Eating lots of wonderful produce, on the other hand, is.
Because you already know that fruits and veggies help you slim down due to their high-fiber/low-calorie combination (and who doesn’t want to be able to eat more and still weigh less?), let’s focus on a few other ways that produce creates a beautiful life, starting today.
When you pack your plate with a variety of colors, it’s like hitting Mother Nature’s pharmacy. And I’m talking about protection that goes way beyond things such as vitamin C for enhanced immunity.
I’ll admit that a lot of the rhetoric around fruits and veggies is focused on things like reducing risk of heart attack and stroke, which to many people may seem far off and vaguely boring at this point in their lives. So let’s talk about some of the short-term, more immediate pressing concerns, such as wrinkles. An international team of researchers who studied people from several countries (which means several different eating patterns) found that in each population, foods such as red meat, whole milk, sodas, and pastries were associated with significantly more skin damage, while people with the most wrinkle-free skin regularly ate more produce, especially richly colored produce.1 Their results weren’t altogether surprising. Fruits and veggies are loaded with antioxidants, and most skin damage is caused by oxidative stress that occurs when sunlight hits the skin. A lean and green diet that fights wrinkles, too? Sign me up.
Another surprising effect of a produce-rich diet? Keeping your lean muscle mass intact, which helps keep your metabolism burning at a higher rate. Fruits and vegetables are chock-full of potassium, which experts have long known helps cut your risk of stroke, bone loss, and kidney stones and also stems the muscle loss that typically occurs every year with age.
A 2008 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition measured urinary potassium levels and found that subjects with the highest potassium intakes had a higher percentage of lean muscle tissue, while those with lower potassium levels had significantly less lean muscle mass.2
Why is potassium protective against losing muscle? The typical American diet is rich in acid-producing foods such as meat and cereals. Over time, these foods can gradually disrupt the body’s natural acid-base balance, which triggers a muscle-wasting response as the body attempts to buffer the excess acid. Fruits and vegetables are high in potassium, which is a wonderful neutralizer because it produces alkaline in the body, which in turn helps keep your lean muscle tissue intact.
Lean muscle tissue is like a furnace that is cooking away at a higher temperature than body fat ever does, so it requires significantly more calories just to maintain. That’s why keeping your lean muscle tissue intact is a key strategy in being able to eat more food and still lose weight.
Unfortunately, when you look at the statistics, what passes as “vegetables” for most of us in America is, let’s be honest, comical even to a non-nutritionist: One-third of all vegetables consumed in the United States are in the form of french fries, potato chips, and iceberg lettuce, hardly nutritional powerhouses. The food industry would like you to believe that that thin purplish line squeaking out from a breakfast cereal bar qualifies as “fruit.” And remember when the Reagan administration tried to convince us that ketchup was a vegetable?
So remember this easy rule: Color is key. Pack color into your diet, starting today. Make sure you don’t have a “white diet” that’s loaded with white bread and rice, sugary breakfast cereals, mashed potatoes and french fries, and iceberg lettuce. Not only will you have awful constipation (there’s little fiber in those foods), but you’re also missing out on the power of color to keep you healthy.
| COLOR | FOUND IN | BENEFITS |
| RED | Strawberries, cherries, watermelons, tomatoes, pink grapefruit Pomegranates, cranberries |
LYCOPENE: A member of the carotenoid family, it acts as a powerful free-radical scavenger and may greatly cut your risk of developing prostate and lung cancer. ELLAGIC ACID: Shown to reduce esophageal and colon tumors; appears to slow down the growth rate of and even trigger apoptosis (“cell death”) in cancer cells. |
| GREEN | Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, kale, turnip greens |
LUTEIN AND ZEAXANTHIN: Helps protect the eyes from agerelated macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in Americans 60 years and older. |
| ORANGE | Carrots, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, mangoes, apricots |
BETA-CAROTENE: This antioxidant has been shown to cut cancer and stroke risk, as well as help raise immunity ability. |
| BLUE/PURPLE | Berries, grapes | RESVERATROL: Helps keep artery walls healthy and reduces the risk of stroke and heart attack. |
| WHITE | Garlic, onions, apples | QUERCETIN: One of the flavonoids, it mops up free radicals, has been shown to kill the herpes virus, cuts the incidence of heart attack, and is a strong antiviral and anti-inflammatory. |
Now let’s get specific. While all produce, pale and vibrant alike, has something to offer, I tell my clients to aim for around three or more colors at each meal, and two or more at each snack. That way you are sure to get a healthy cocktail of nature’s protection every time you eat. Of course, we’re talking about naturally occurring pigments (i.e., blueberries versus blue-colored ketchup, dark leafy greens as opposed to a green-chocolate-covered candy). You can even count the darker hues in whole grains, beans, mushrooms, legumes— even that daily glass of red wine—in this “color count.”
In addition to staying leaner and developing fewer wrinkles, take a look at the table on page 129 to see a few of the other ways eating more fruits and vegetables can help you experience health at the highest level.
Before we get to the green benefits, I’d like to make two quick comments about your Prescription. First, I’m sure you noticed that I included all fresh fruits and vegetables in the leanest category. I’m not going to quibble over a few calories between produce types, especially given the power of the whole package, so keep it simple for yourself. Trust me, Americans are not the fattest people on the planet because we’re overdoing it on fruits and veggies.
Second, you’ll recall that I mentioned minimizing packaging to the extent that you can while still keeping your Prescription. Here’s why: The produce aisle has exploded with different packages of precut fruits and vegetables, which ultimately has made it easier for many busy Americans to eat them. In my opinion, this trend is ultimately a good thing for the planet because it’s good for human health, even if it does come with the burden of higher packaging in the short term. However, the added convenience does come with a higher grocery bill (sometimes much higher), so if you have the time to prepare them, buy whole fruits and vegetables whenever possible.
So now that you know your basic Prescription from a lean standpoint, let’s take a closer look at some of the issues that go into how “green” your pack of pickled peppers may or may not be.
In the spring of 2005, I was in the Loire Valley in France, planning a conference on childhood obesity and school lunches that I hosted with Field to Plate in 2006. We had stopped at this charming little café, and our host Phillipe insisted that we order the local spécialité, fresh cream of mushroom soup with thyme.
It is not an exaggeration to say that each spoonful was pure heaven. One taste and I sank into idiocy as the intense, meaty mushroom flavor floating in a sea of cream washed over each ecstatic tastebud. It was nothing like the quivering tower of gray stuff I’d seen plopped in a pan and heated for lunch when I was younger. Never, I realized, had I actually tasted cream of mushroom soup until that very moment.
“Phillipe,” I cooed, “this is incredible! Are these mushrooms local?”
“Non,” he said brusquely, with a wave of his hand. “They are from two villages away.”
Two villages away. That pretty much sums up the difference in expectations of “local” between the French and the Americans when it comes to food.
Welcome to the next part of living a leaner and greener lifestyle—eating like a “locavore” for a couple of meals each week. As a locavore, you’re going to start tapping into more foods that are being grown or produced near you. You will make the season the foundation of your fresh food choices, which is guaranteed to freshen up your cart with some new options, give you more variety throughout the year, and help shake you out of the shopping rut that we all get in from time to time. Most important, it means you are about to move to your healthiest, slimmest self while thinning that haze of carbon emissions wafting up from your global shopping cart. Because here is another key overlap in the new lean and green cuisine: One of the strongest calls coming from food energy experts is to diversify what we grow. And one of the best dietary strategies to maximize health is to eat a wide variety of foods. Diversification of the American diet away from a corn-centric ingredient list (and all its thousands of derivations) offers a healthy, fresh start on both fronts.
So, back to the produce. In order to help you see the many levels of leaner and greener choices, let me be clear: From a weight standpoint, an apple is (more or less) an apple no matter where it’s from. And the most important thing for losing weight is that you actually eat your fruits and vegetables rather than become paralyzed by the ethical maze of which choice is the absolute best. I have seen many clients fall into that trap, and believe me, all this does is prevent you from moving toward your goals.
As I’ve said, the carbon savings are big when you move to plants; produce requires an average of 2 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food, while animal proteins require 20 to 80 calories of energy for 1 calorie of food.4
As I wrote this book, dozens of people offered up hundreds of questions to see where their favorite foods would land on the lean and green scale. Overall, their questions were extremely helpful in letting me see things through a client’s perspective, but this particular question was perhaps the most vexing.
From a “lean” lens, the answer is easy. Truly fresh produce contains the vibrancy of nutrients and antioxidants and phytochemicals in a way that frozen and canned cannot wholly recapture. This is one of the pluses of rediscovering local foods when you can, so stick to fresh produce as much as possible. But “fresh” broccoli that has limped to your market from another country and is drooping on the shelf is apt to have lost some or most of its nutrients. In that case, hit the freezer aisle.
“Naked” frozen fruits and vegetables are a very good second choice, and if the “fresh” options look less than stellar, the frozen varieties will most likely offer even more nutrients. Technology today makes it easy to lock in much of the nutrition and powerful plant compounds, and frozen is a lifesaver when you’re time strapped or can’t hit the market. It’s also a great way to eat on a budget, so if you can’t afford to eat fresh, hit the freezer aisle to reap the benefits. Choose naked fruits and vegetables with no sauces or syrups, so you can control what goes on your plate.
For the most part, limit canned produce to the extent that your budget allows. (I made a few exceptions in your Prescription where the health benefits are worth it.) In general, seek canned produce that comes in water, versus syrups, oils, or sauces that can add calories and sodium.
In terms of green, hands down, growing your own garden is the greenest of all. After that, local and seasonal is a very good bet. And after that, it gets fuzzy fast.
If you want to talk about the carbon merits of frozen versus canned, you can quickly get bogged down in a haze of mind-boggling “if, but” scenarios that would tax King Solomon. I’ll show you how easy it can be to do that with this little ditty of consciousness (this is you, sitting in the store, agonizing over the “best” choice) …
“Well, canning is about 10 times as energy intensive as fresh, but then again a canned product has a long shelf life and can be kept at room temperature. And if I recycle the can, well, the carbon footprint will be lower as it offsets the energy involved in making the can. But if I don’t recycle it, hmmm, it will be higher. The final carbon footprint of frozen produce (which is less energy intensive than canning at the onset but more energy intensive than fresh) depends on how long it sits in my freezer until it’s used. But there’s a lot less packaging per ounce of food, so that is greener … but, what’s this, my organic frozen broccoli is from China?!? And oh no, this supermarket has its freezer aisles sitting open wafting greenhouse gases up into the air … ”
See what I mean? It can start to make the tax code seem simple in comparison, and the last thing you need in your hectic life is paralysis by analysis. So here’s my best advice: Don’t worry about it. There are more important areas of your diet where you can have a much bigger impact on calories and carbon (e.g., meat, dairy). If you see a glaring carbon error, by all means avoid it. And stick with what’s best from a nutrition standpoint: fresh and frozen.
So just what kinds of savings are we talking about? A 2008 study in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology determined that simply switching from meat to vegetables for 1 day per week shaves off the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles per year.5 If every American did that, 1.7 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved. If we all strived for local foods, the savings would be even more.
As you’ve probably noticed, supermarkets these days seem to offer virtually the same snapshot of produce options regardless of season or geography. Gone are the days of anticipating the first strawberries of the summer or fresh-picked local corn. Instead, our globalized supermarkets provide us with a truly movable feast of all produce, all the time. As a result, our produce has become more drenched in fossil fuel than it is in calories or nutrients. And here are a few of the reasons why.
All of this adds petroleum and food miles to our plates.
Stumped as to what grows when? Here’s a quick primer appropriate to most regions of the country. Check with your local state extension agency to see exactly what’s available to you.
| SPRING | SUMMER | FALL | WINTER |
| Asparagus | Berries | Apples | Beets |
| Greens/lettuces | Cantaloupes and watermelons |
Asian pears | Cabbage |
| Peas | Corn | Cranberries | Brussels sprouts |
| Peaches | Bell peppers | Potatoes and sweet potatoes |
Parsnips |
| Morel mushrooms | Tomatoes | Onions | Citrus |
| Spinach | Plums | Turnips | Winter squashes |
While rising fuel costs may change this (as it makes less and less economic sense to grow food in far-flung places and then ship it around the globe), as of now, most of our produce not only racks up frequent-flier miles but also fossil fuel. Consider that iceberg lettuce imported to the United Kingdom from the United States by plane requires 127 calories of energy to transport 1 calorie of lettuce across the Atlantic. For every mile traveled by an 18-wheeler to haul our food around the United States, 3.74 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted. So driving one truck of strawberries from California to New York puts more than 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—more than 4 ounces of carbon dioxide for each 12-ounce box of strawberries.7
The following table shows the average distance produce was found to travel by truck in a 2003 study by Iowa State University. The researchers found that by sourcing locally, they were able to shave the fuel bill down to about ½7 of the distance from farm to plate, reducing the average food miles from 1,494 miles to just 56 miles. If just 10 percent of Iowans’ food was actually grown within Iowa, researchers concluded, the annual fuel savings would be between 295,000 to 350,000 gallons of gas, and the greenhouse gas savings between 7 million and 7.9 million pounds.8
Definitely food for thought.
| FOOD | DISTANCE | FOOD | DISTANCE |
| Grapes (table) | 2,143 miles | Peas, green | 2,102 miles |
| Broccoli | 2,095 miles | Spinach | 2,086 miles |
| Asparagus | 1,671 miles | Strawberries | 1,944 miles |
| Apples | 1,555 miles |
By now, you may be scratching your head and wondering, So is local food more energy efficient? Here’s the surprise answer: not necessarily. But you should still try to eat local anyway, as much as your local growing season allows, for a strong lean and green overlap. I’ll tell you why shortly, but for now, let’s look at some of the reasons localism isn’t a silver bullet for a smaller carbon footprint.
While localism no doubt cuts food miles, the absolute carbon advantages of localism depend on where you live, on the time of year, and on the specific foods in question. Tomatoes grown in a greenhouse locally, for instance, may actually be more energy intensive to produce than tomatoes grown somewhere warmer and shipped to you.
While “food miles” is one marker of carbon footprint, there are others that may be bigger; how food is produced and packaged and stored, for instance, seem to matter as much, if not more. A 2008 study found that transportation created only about 11 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions (about 8.1 metric tons) in an average US household’s “food footprint,” while agriculture and industry practices accounted for 83 percent.9 They also found that switching to a totally local diet is the equivalent of saving about 1,000 miles from the distance you drive your car each year, and that much bigger, more significant carbon savings were to be had by cutting back on meat and dairy.10 (As we already saw, simply moving 1 day a week from meat to plants yields bigger savings.)
“The argument that reducing food miles decreases fossil fuel consumption appears so obvious, so intuitively logical, that it would seem anyone who questions it must be insane, work for Exxon Mobil, or live in the food-exporting nation of New Zealand,” noted one plucky journalist.11
Funny he should say that, because in fact it was New Zealand who fought back against this localized thing and produced some data about lamb production (which I shared with you in Chapter 5). Another hole in the theory came when a 2005 study found that the Kiwis’ production of Braeburn apples outyielded German Braeburn orchards by a factor of two, for a net energy efficiency of 25 percent.12 Clearly, there may be some cases where natural geography creates a smaller carbon footprint.
There’s a little-known international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation (signed in 1944), whose purpose was to help the fledgling airline industry. Under this treaty, fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes (unlike the fuel used for trucks, cars, and buses). There’s also currently no tax on fuel used by ocean freighters, which hides the true “cost” of our current movable feast.13
Move over mangoes and guavas—there’s a whole new batch of exotic fruits hitting the markets these days. Hailing from exotic locales around the globe, they come steeped in intriguing cultural lore (some are said to improve your sex life) as well as 21st-century health claims (boosting immunity and fighting cancer). The question is, Are these superfruits worth it?
The bottom line: no. While they may add a splash of new taste or texture, or just make your diet seem more exotic, these fruits aren’t any more likely to salve your American stress or provide a unique health advantage, and are likely to be a lot more carbon intensive. You will also likely pay more for them. So ignore the marketing hype (many of the claims are unsubstantiated) and save your dollars. Some fantastic American fruits that pack amazing nutrition include cranberries, pomegranates, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, red grapes, and cherries.
Here’s a quick rundown, with some suggestions of fantastic American beauties that may be a better bet when it comes to your health.14
| FRUIT/LOCATION | FOUND IN | CLAIMS | AMERICAN BEAUTIES |
| Acai berry/Amazon | Juices and smoothies |
Rich in anthocyanins, fiber, potassium, and magnesium |
Blueberries or pomegranates |
| Goji berry/China | Juices and teas, breakfast cereals |
High in betacarotene, zeaxanthin, and lycopene |
Tomatoes or dark, leafy greens |
| Noni/Tropics/ Southeast Asia |
Juice, especially varieties sold online |
Rich in vitamin C and potassium |
Strawberries or raspberries |
| Mangosteen/ Africa, Asia, Pacific Tropics |
Juices and desserts |
Phytonutrients are extracted from its skin |
Cranberries, red grapes, or cherries |
Then there is a more practical consideration for those living in places where developers forgot to check with Mother Nature before plopping down communities; there may not actually be much local food. At least not all the time, anyway. Places like Arizona (the place, it’s worth noting, from which Barbara Kingsolver fled in her best-selling Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in order to be able to get closer to her food), Nevada, and Utah come to mind, where much of the land is basically a desert. People in places such as Montana and Alaska contend with very short growing seasons. Is localism a sort of eco-fantasy for these folks? For some months of the year, probably yes.
So with all of these vagaries of the food system spelled out, you may be scratching your head at this point and asking yourself, “If it’s not always greener, why should I bother to become a locavore?”
The answer is relatively simple: because many times, it is the greenest choice. And with spiraling energy prices, it is time to invest in the future of green local food. Now. What’s more, eating more like a locavore makes for a smart strategy when it comes to getting lean.
Simple is really a better deal for you and the planet in every way. Take a look at the premium you pay for “convenience,” probably without knowing it.
| FOOD ITEM | PRICE* | COST PER OUNCE |
| 32-oz bag carrots | $1.79 | 5¢ |
| 10-oz bag shredded carrots | $1.49 | 14¢ |
| Head romaine lettuce (36 oz) | $1.69 | 5¢ |
| 9-oz bag Fresh Express Chopped Romaine | $2.99 | 33¢ |
| Musselman’s Applesauce (48-oz jar) | $3.79 | 8¢ |
| Six (4-oz) packs Musselman’s Applesauce (24 oz total) | $2.99 | 12¢ |
| Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Theater Butter Gourmet Popping Corn (three 3-oz bags) |
$2.99 | 30¢ |
| Jolly Time Popcorn in resealable bag (32 oz) | $1.79 | 6¢ |
*Prices from Albertsons Supermarket in Park City, Utah, on June 11, 2008.
| FOOD | COST PER UNIT* |
INDUSTRIAL “FOOD PRODUCTS” |
COST PER UNIT* |
| Fresh ear of corn (90 calories) |
60¢/ear | Cheese popcorn (160 calories per serving) Corn chips (140 calories per serving) Cornflakes (110 calories per serving) |
$1.79/bag (5 oz) 36¢/oz $3.79/bag (13 oz) 29¢/oz $2.79/box (12 oz) 23¢/oz |
| Potato (130 calories) |
70¢/lb 4¢/oz |
Potato Au Gratin from a box (180 calories per 1-cup serving) BBQ potato chips (150 calories per serving) Frozen tater tots (170 calories per 9 tots) |
33¢/oz $3.79/bag 34¢/oz $3.00/bag (2 lbs) 9¢/oz |
| Oatmeal (155 calories per serving) |
$2.99/container (18 oz) 16¢/oz |
Oatmeal bar (180 calories) |
$3.39/box (6) 38¢/oz |
| Skinless, boneless chicken breasts (122 calories per 4-oz serving) |
$4.29/lb 26¢/oz |
Chicken nuggets (356 calories per 4-oz serving) |
$4.99/package 41¢/oz |
| Fresh bacon (130 calories per 1-oz serving) |
$3.49/8 oz 43¢/oz |
Bacon bits (48 calories per 2 Tbsp) |
$2.29/jar 76¢/oz |
*Prices from Shaw’s Supermarket, 71 Dodge Street, Beverly, MA 01915, on June 16, 2008.
Perhaps one of the most important benefits to a more localized diet is that it’s our best shot at reversing a disturbing trend nutritionists and dietitians around the country are seeing—many of us really don’t have a relationship to food anymore.
People seem willing to put up with the tasteless offerings in the supermarket because they are steadily losing direct experience with what food actually tastes like. The dramatic flavor of a freshly picked raspberry, still warm from the sun, can stop you in your tracks. Do you remember your first experience where the power of flavor and taste did that?
I do. It was summertime, and I was in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, living with my grandmother while working at Tanglewood and writing my master’s thesis. Having grown up in a house where we “made” salad for dinner from a box called “E tu Brute” (with a little picture of a laurelled Julius Caesar staring back from a box containing little pouches of croutons, “bacon” bits, Parmesan “cheese,” and dressing), I equated food from a garden with my Little House on the Prairie phase when I was a tween.
Over for dinner at the home of family friends Gary and Carol Scarafoni, I wandered over to their garden more out of curiosity than any burning desire to know my food. But it was a revelation. I gobbled sugar snap peas still hanging on the vine. They were bursting with sweetness and crunch. They were alive. I never even knew I liked sugar snap peas—and I realized at that moment it was because I had never actually tasted them. I was suddenly excited to think about eating more of this stuff, because it tasted so much better! What else, I wondered, had I been missing out on all of these years? And why the heck were we eating salad from a box if things like this were out there?
Then, there’s the added culinary advantage to eating like a locavore. “When you start with the best ingredients, you really don’t need to do a lot to them because they will stand deliciously on their own,” says Amanda Archibald, RD. Amanda’s company, www. fieldtoplate.com, has one of the best seasonal resource guides available online; you can click on your state and get a customized guide of what is in season for that state each month during the year.
Iverson Brownell, owner of Iverson Catering in Park City, agrees. “Don’t be intimidated by the idea of breaking out of your comfort zone when it comes to moving to seasonal produce,” Brownell suggests. “The key is to try the same produce and cook it a few different ways to figure out what works best for your family. So, for instance, one day in spring, you may buy fresh asparagus and toss it on the grill with some olive oil, salt, and pepper; the next week, you may try roasting it in the oven at 375°F with the same dressing, but perhaps throw a bit of Parmesan cheese on it. Then the following week, you cook it in a pan with the same dressing and give a nice squeeze of lemon juice at the end. After a few trials, you’ll have a good idea of how you like to prepare your veggies, and what works specifically for your lifestyle and taste.”
The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) concept originated in Japan 30 years ago. Called teikei, this translates to “putting the farmers’ faces on food.” Today there are more than 1,000 CSAs across the United States and Canada, and the number continues to expand.
Community Supported Agriculture lets you buy directly from the people who are growing your food, often allowing you to save money in the process. Farms typically invite members to buy a weekly “share” of food produced during the growing season.
Log on to www.localharvest.org to find the CSA or farmers’ market nearest to you.
If local food tastes better, it’s no surprise to learn that eating more like a locavore is a leaner bet. All things being equal, local food offers a higher-quality package than something shipped from miles away—often with less packaging. It slashes all that transit and storage time, keeping nutrients and phytochemicals intact. It will connect you more directly to those vibrant, fresh, living foods that create a greater vibrancy in your own body. It will force you to follow a more diverse diet that is a hallmark of healthier eating. And perhaps as an added bonus, it helps leverage your natural biology; you are apt to simply eat less if you don’t have the world at your fingertips every time you get the slightest desire for a nibble. Of course, I am not suggesting we revert to our puritanical days, scrounging by on meager produce in winter, but clearly we need to strike a better balance. Localism can help. So while localism isn’t a silver bullet for a diet to help stop global warming, it’s still a very good strategy for other reasons. If you can’t practice it all the time, practice it as much as you can, to the extent that you can.
If farmers had the marketing muscle of pharmaceutical companies, we’d all be flocking to the produce aisle and duking it out over the last pint of blueberries. Here’s a quick rundown of just some of the life-supporting benefits that research suggests fruits and vegetables have to offer. They:
The best way to get excited about food is to bring it alive to your senses. Local food tastes better, and it’s a powerful tool to get you to eat more healthfully. Many kids today have no connection to the food supply other than supermarket-sterile food sold in shiny wrappers, accompanied by lots of marketing, with no whiff of the farm or the animals that created it. Is this where food “comes from”? So teach your children well; instead of popping in a Baby Einstein DVD for them to learn about life on “Old MacDonald’s farm” (which many of us have been guilty of, myself included), why not connect them in real life to the flavors of local food and the dynamics of the growing process? If you do, they are likely to get excited and actually eat. No matter where you live, from urban to rural, you can nourish those connections and plant the seeds of food for a lifetime. Research shows this not only boosts the odds that they will try some of those foods (which means better nutrition and eating habits), but you’ll also be giving them valuable face time with Mother Earth, who desperately needs that generation to care.
So is it really so bad for the planet for you to be nibbling strawberries in wintertime? Once in a while, probably not. But the inconvenient truth is that when it is a standard part of 300 million Americans’ diets, alongside a pile of other utterly unsustainable choices, yes.
In the end, it’s really pretty simple.
Eat fresh, vibrant, seasonal food. As much as you can.
A win for you. A win for the planet.
Here’s another immediate, easy way that you can inch into a greener zone: Even if you don’t change what’s in your cart, if you simply reduce how often you fill it, you can take a big bite out of your carbon footprint. That’s because your ride as a personal shopper is probably going to be the least efficient leg of your food’s journey. In fact, a professor at UC Davis determined that, for the same amount of fuel, 11 pounds of groceries would travel:
1 kilometer by private car
43 kilometers by air
740 kilometers by truck
2,400 kilometers by rail
3,800 kilometers by ship16
What’s the take-home point for you?
For one thing, zipping to the farmers’ market in your SUV for organic strawberries is not greener for the Earth. With more than half of all Americans living in suburbia (requiring a car trip for all errands), savings matter.
So identify at least two ways you can personally become a more efficient shopper. Can you shop less frequently? Bring your own bags? Get a carpool going to the big box retailer with some neighbors or send your list of requests to a friend and take turns going? Split up mega orders for cost and carbon savings? Remember that your personal food miles are as much a factor in a greener diet as almost anything else.
1. M. Purba et al., “Skin Wrinkling; Can Food Make a Difference?” J Am Coll Nutr (2001) 20(1):71–80.
2. B. Dawson-Hughes et al., “Alkaline Diets Favor Lean Tissue Mass in Older Adults,” Am J Clin Nutr (2008) 87(3):662–65.
3. James A. Joseph, Daniel A. Nadeau, and Anne Underwood, The Color Code: A Revolutionary Eating Plan for Optimum Health (New York: Hyperion, 2002).
4. David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel, “The Future of American Agriculture,” in Sustainable Food Systems, ed. Dietrich Knorr (Westport, CT: AVI Publishing Co., 1983).
5. C. Weber and H. Matthews, “Food Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States,” Environ Sci Technol. Web release date April 16, 2008.
6. Field to Plate Web site: http://www.fieldtoplate.com/guide.php. Accessed June 9, 2008.
7. Pirog et al., “Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local versus Conventional Produce Sales to Iowa Institutions,” Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, July 2003.
8. Ibid.
9. Weber and Matthews, “Food Miles,” April 16, 2008.
10. Ibid.
11. James McWilliams, “Moveable Feast: Eating Local Isn’t Always the Greenest Option,” Texas Observer, August 10, 2007. http://www.texasobserver.org/ article.php?aid=25646.
12. M.M. Blank and B. Burdick, “Food (Miles) for Thought: Energy Balance for Locally Grown versus Imported Apple Fruit,” Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2005) 12(3):125–27.
13. Elizabeth Rosenthal, “Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries around the World,” The New York Times, April 26, 2008.
14. Diane Welland, “5 New Exotic Fruits: How Super Good for You Are They?” Environmental Nutrition (June 2008) 31(6):2.
15. The Food Processor, ESHA version 8.8, December 2006. Accessed June 13, 2008.
16. S Brodt, E. Chernoh, and G. Feenstra, “Assessment of Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Food System: A Literature Review,” Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, November 2007.