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Healthy and Sustainable Food

Eating for Your Health and the Environment

The following are a few reasons why eating local and sustainable food is healthier for you and the environment:

Food that is grown and harvested locally is usually given more time to ripen, increasing its nutrient value.
Eating sustainably-grown crops reduces the potential human health and environmental consequences of pesticides.
The greater the distance food has to travel to the consumer, the greater the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
Buying local food encourages farmers to diversify their crops. Diversity in the fields decreases vulnerability to pests, extreme weather, and disease.
In addition, purchasing local food benefits your local economy.

“Is Local More Nutritious?” It Depends

The nutritional superiority of local food is an increasingly common claim. But is it true? The answer depends on a number of factors. By the time fruits and vegetables reach your kitchen counter – whether from a stall at a local farmers market, or the supermarket produce department – their ultimate nutritional quality is determined by : the specific variety chosen, the growing methods used, ripeness when harvested, post harvest handling, storage, extent and type of processing, and distance transported. So, the vitamin and mineral content of fruits and vegetables depends on decisions and practices of people all along the food system – from seed to table – whether or not that system is local or global.

While all of the factors affecting nutritional quality of fruits and vegetables – crop variety, production method, post-harvest handling, storage, and processing and packaging – apply equally to produce that is produced locally or on farms across the country, relying on local sources for your produce needs has some distinct advantages. The relatively short transit time in distribution for local produce is hard to beat. When choosing varieties destined for local markets, farmers tend to favor taste, nutrition and diversity over shipability. For direct and local marketing strategies, produce is usually sold within 24 hours after harvest, at its peak freshness and ripeness. Along a short local distribution chain, produce is likely handled by fewer people, decreasing potential for damage. In the Northeast, diets based on foods available locally can be nutritionally adequate year-round. This guide can provide you with information regarding the delicious seasonal foods of the Northeast.

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Biodiversity & Agriculture

With genetically modified crops, sophisticated machinery, and satellite monitoring of fields, technology has transformed how farmers produce food. These technological advances, while enormously important to agricultural productivity, can make it more difficult to identify that growing food is still inherently a process governed by Nature. While farms may appear as vast expanses of uniformity with rows upon rows of one or a few crops, even the most apparently bland farm landscapes house a remarkable diversity of organisms. In addition, the crops themselves have been bred from a diverse lineage of related varieties. These forms of biodiversity, both among and within species, are vital to growing food.

For each plant species grown as a crop we eat, untold numbers of other species participate in its success. A cubic meter of soil houses an enormous abundance of life, on the order of several billion living organisms. One function of these microbes is to help fix nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, into the soil. Mycorrhizae, a group of fungi that create vast underground scaffoldings (the length of mycorrhizal strands contained in a cubic meter of soil would measure more than a thousand miles if stretched out end to end (Pennisi 2004)) provide an additional service. The fungal strands attach onto plant roots from which they draw nutrients and water. In so doing, they prevent soil erosion, and have been shown to be capable of binding toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, thus preventing their absorption into the edible parts of crops. Soil organisms are not all microscopic of course. That same cubic meter of soil also holds tens of thousands of insects, worms, and burrowing vertebrates, all of which shape and renew the soil.

The diversity that nurtures crops extends above ground as well. Beneficial insects, such as Green Lacewings whose larvae eat a variety of plant parasites, protect crops against infestations. Another 100,000 species, including insects, birds, and other animals, serve as pollinators. Each year about $15 billion of crops rely on bees for pollination in the U.S. and studies show that the percentage of food crops dependent on pollination is rising (Aizen 2008). Yet, populations of pollinators, particularly honeybees, are in sharp decline. In 2006, losses of up to 70 percent of hives were reported in 24 states across the U.S.

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Healthy and Sustainable Food Eating for Your Health and the Environment

Healthy and Sustainable Food

Eating for Your Health and the Environment