Purchasing and eating seasonal foods has become a lot more popular lately and for very good reason!
Here are the 7 biggest ways eating seasonally produced foods can impact yourself, your community, and the entire world.
1. Better Health
There is a reason your body craves specific foods at specific times. Your body knows what nutrients it needs and where to find them, and it uses your taste buds to create cravings to send you there.
Cucumbers and cantaloupe cool you off in the summer when they are perfect to pick, yams sound hearty and delicious in November when they are in season and your body needs the extra carbs to stay warm and healthy.
2. Stronger Economy
Seasonal foods are more likely to be locally grown foods, so you are helping out your local economy, farmers and small business owners by keeping your income in the community where you live.
3. Low Carbon Footprint
Purchasing local seasonal foods reduces the impact on the environment significantly by making a huge dent in the carbon footprint of our foods. Local seasonal foods don’t need to be driven across the country or shipped in from overseas.
4. Use of Fewer Resources
Growing foods against their natural timeline requires added energy resources in the form of extra water, heat, and other growing needs.
5. Less Chemical Fertilizers
These out-of-season foods often require additional chemical fertilizers to get them to grow out of season, all of which can strip the environment. This of course is bad for the environment and our bodies.
6. Less Preservatives
Seasonally grown foods use fewer preservatives to keep them fresh. Not shipping produce across the globe means the foods need far less preservatives and packaging to keep them fresh through their journey.
7. Tastier Food
The more seasonal the produce, the tastier it is. For example: tomatoes can be bland when eaten in winter, but are sweet and succulent in early summer.
Berries are at their juiciest on the vine in springtime. Pick them at any other time of year and they will not have the same sweet juicy flavor.
Do yourself, your community, and the whole planet a favor — get healthy and in sync with your body by procuring seasonal produce from your local farmers market or vendor.
