organic vs food miles vs packaged vs seasonal
A few years ago I did a natural nutrition course with The College of Natural Nutrtion. It was of course very pro organic food. But it also placed great emphasis on eating with the seasons.
Being the little earth loving creature I am, I now find myself confused when I’m in the fruit and veg department and it can take me ages to pick my purchases:
The organic apples I’m looking at are in a plastic non biodegradable bag.
So I must surely buy the in-organic loose apples.
The organic lemons are in a net bag and they’re from South Africa
So I have to get loose in-organic ones from Spain.
I want to eat with the seasons.
But what do I do when winter sets and it’s so ‘normal’ to boost my Vit C with oranges and lemons, which will no doubt come all the way from SA.
And now someone has told me about David Bellamy who reckons global warming is ‘a load of poppycock!’ so maybe food miles don’t make a difference after all.
I’m very confused.
How do you go about choosing your fruit and veg?
If you assume that given the choice, local + seasonal + organic is preferable, then farmers markets and box schemes give you all that in one (packaging free) package – they’re the way to go. Have a look here and see what’s near you:
http://www.localfoodadvisor.com/
You don’t need tropical fruit to get plenty of vitamin C, even during the English winter. Many winter vegetables, like leeks, kale and sprouts contain loads of vitamin C (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Natural_and_artificial_dietary_sources). If you’re really worried, one single rose hip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_hip), abundant in autumn hedgerows, will give you your RDA of vitamin C, for free.
If you’re actually interested in climate change, then reading the science, as summarised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC – see here for who they are: http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.htm), is a good idea. They produce a huge amount of very comprehensive, complex material. Fortunately, they also produce their ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ report – which is intended to give the worlds governments simple information & solid guidance that they can use to base policy decisions on. These are intended to be read by non-experts and are pretty short. The latest one is 22 pages, mostly graphs, and available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm – you probably want the SPM link (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf).
If you’re interested in the David Bellamy thing from 2004, then read this: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/08/19/correspondence-with-david-bellamy/ and then have a look through this: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
As always Duncan, you’ve loads of food for thought. I’ve been putting Gogi Berries in my morning lemon and ginger to up my Vit C every morning as we move into winter. And the Other day I made James Wong’s Immune Booster Soup and it was fabulous.
Regards boxes though, yes, we do get Riverford Delivery..but sometimes I want to jsut do it hte old fashined way and pick the food myself. Think I better get down to the local greengrocer for that!
Thanks for all the other links, I’ll be checking them out when I can.