Saturday, July 22, 2006

Mother Earth News: Eating Local - How To Find The Best Food

How to Find the Best Food

By Barbara Pleasant and Tabitha Alterman

20 ways to get fresh, sustainable food in your neck of the woods.

Would you like to reduce air pollution, recycle your money into your community, support family farmers and enjoy food that tastes better and is more nutritious than what you can buy at the supermarket? Easy! Eat more locally produced food.

Buying fresh local food also is the easiest way to avoid eating processed food with added sugar, fat and preservatives. Locally grown food tastes better because it’s fresher, and growers can plant better-tasting varieties if their fruits and vegetables won’t need to stand up to long-distance shipping.

“It’s so easy to be seduced by year-round produce at the supermarket, but when you allow yourself to be seduced all the time, you’re choosing a shadow image of the real thing,” says Deborah Madison, author of Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets (available on Mother’s Bookshelf). “Fragile things that don’t ship well, like apricots and lettuce, are really special when they are fresh,” Madison says.

The case for eating locally grown food is strong, but how do you make it happen? Across the continent, hundreds of people have sought answers by challenging themselves to eat more local foods — sometimes nothing but — for a day, a month or even a year (see “Taking On a Local Food Challenge"). To help you find your comfort level within the local food movement, here are 20 great ways to make eating locally work for you.

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Mother Earth News: Eating Local - How To Find The Best Food


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