Before food transportation was so widespread, our ancestors’ fresh food options consisted solely of what they could grow in their own gardens or trade with neighbours. Many had never tasted kiwifruit or avocados if they spent their lives in this part of the world. They didn’t eat strawberries in December or potatoes in June.
Thanks to the modernizing of refrigeration, transportation and mass food production, we now have many ‘fresh’ foods available to purchase year-round. Even if it has to travel from Mexico, Chile or New Zealand. We’ve grown used to the taste of a watery strawberry or an overripe mango. We throw out a lot of this food too, because we just don’t value the taste or the trouble it took to make its way into our fridges.
What I invite you to think about is how your lunch bag or dinner table might look if you chose to eat more of the items that come from your own region, as they are ripening. How might you enjoy these farm-fresh delicacies when they are fresh-picked that day and only had to travel a few kilometres to you?
In this day and age, we can technically get any item we wish at the local grocery store. This has expanded our cooking repertoire and our palates to include exotic fruits and vegetables, but at what cost? Have you ever cut into a tomato purchased in February to see it partially ripe in some parts and hard as a rock in others? And what about the flavour?
There is a big difference in the taste of a seasonal, local vegetable versus one that was imported out of season. Non-seasonal produce is often grown in ‘conventional’ style meaning up to 50,000 acres of monocropped GMO seeds, treated with chemical pesticides, fertilizers and ripeners, then picked prior to being ready so that it can survive long enough to be put on our grocery store shelves. I know we don’t like to think of our food in this way – at least I don’t – but that is the sad fact. Conventional has come to mean mass-produced, grown without love from a scientific perspective.
With globalization, our demands on nature have grown exponentially, and because we can have it, we want it. We are consumers. Eating this way compromises both the nutritional value and the flavour, not to mention what all of those unnatural substances do to our bodies.
Sure our farms in the West Kootenays don’t produce much in the way of exotic or tropical foods, and I am not saying you need to avoid pineapple or bamboo shoots. What I am starting to do, and encouraging you to do is become more aware of what is in season and eat it mainly when it is freshest and comes from local sources. There are plenty of resources online to help you with this if you’ve lost touch like I have, of what is ripening in our area from month to month. For example, right now there are radish, green onion, herbs, chard, kale, beet greens, and lettuces.
There are some excellent reasons to keep the majority of your produce seasonal. You are supporting the local economy, and reducing the cost and distance your food takes to travel to your table. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with nature and the passing of time as well as to eat foods at their peak when they are freshest and tastiest. Not only that, you avoid paying a premium for foods specially provided out-of-season.
For more information on Vegibox, visit Local Fare Nakusp on Facebook or call 250-265-2065.
