Eating Seasonally And Getting Back To Nature
Eating seasonally was the way humans received their nourishment and was a way of life at one time. It wasn’t a choice or considered a “food movement” It’s time eat eat we get back to nature and embrace the bounty of our seasonal harvest.
Eat seasonally — In the spring tender nutritious greens were consumed as a large part of people diets. Dandelions with all their nutritious value and tender spring onions were added to many meals for flavor and enjoyment. Spring meant new birth of life for animals such as lambs that were eaten for nourishment and gratefully accepted.
Eat seasonally — In the summer tomatoes and corn were abundant and eaten with pleasure just as chickens laid their biggest and best eggs in late summer.
Eat seasonally — In the fall and winter root vegetables flourished and were consumed with thankful hearts. Chickens in the winter were roasted with dried herbs for a fine tender meal.
But how things have changed my friends! We now have supermarkets that carry every food that our heart’s desire and more. Supermarkets bring us whatever we want, whether its fruits, vegetables, or exotic foods from foreign lands. If we want fresh peaches in the middle of the winter they can fly them in from New Zealand.
But are we paying a high price for the convenient?
Are these foods nutritious and are we destroying our environment?
Lets take a look at what we just might be losing by not eating seasonally:
- Logically transporting food long distances raises the cost of the food, we are paying for the transporting. Flying fresh produce from another country can come at a high price. We pay for the produce to be packed and shipped to the airport, the airplane to fly it to us, and then from the airport trucked probably several hundred miles to our convenient supermarkets.
- Consider the fossil fuel that is consumed by the airplane and the trucks, the emissions of toxic pollutant into our atmosphere that we are all breathing every day.
- Large scale farming is highly unlikely to practice sustainable and organic principles, this causes further degradation of our environment during the growing process.
- Food that has traveled long distance has to be picked long before it is ripe. Any fruit or vegetable that’s not allowed to ripen properly simply won’t contain as many nutrients as naturally ripen produce, and it certainly will not have the flavor of fresh off the vine or tree produce.
Few Suggestions For Getting Back To Nature and eat seasonally and healthy:
- Make sure you shop at local farmers, health food stores, or local business that carries the highest quality of food and uses sustainable practices to save our environment. Even some supermarkets have local produce sections that are locally grown and picked fresh. Talk to the store manager to make sure you know the source of the food so that you can be ensured you are getting the best quality and nutritional value.
- Read signs and labels carefully to make sure you are purchasing as local as possible. Do your research!
- Plan your meals keeping in mind the season. Select dishes and recipes that are in the natural flow of the season. You will be doing your part to preserve our environment, support your local community, and I can guarantee your family will enjoy the flavorful dishes and at the same time benefit from the extra nutritional value and health benefits that local harvest provides to the body.
- Join a CSA – a Community Supported Agriculture program. According to the USDA there are at least 13 thousand programs in the US and growing more every day.
A Seasonal Easy Healthy Recipe That I love and is always a hit when I serve it to guests:
Seasoned Sweet Potato Wedges:
Ingredients:
- 8 Medium Sized potatoes (organic or local harvest)
- Organic Pure Unrefined cold pressed extra virgin coconut oil
- Organic Dried Rosemary
- Organic Dried Oregano
- Organic Dried Basil
- Organic Ground Thyme
- Sea Salt
Directions: Cut the sweet potatoes into wedges or slices, coat wedges with coconut oil, sprinkle each herb one at a time on the sweet potato wedges or slices. Sprinkle sea salt over and laid out flat on baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-45 minutes or until tender or that you can stick a fork into sweet potato easily. Enjoy!
Getting back to Nature is something we need to practice everyday to ensure a healthy, happy future for our children and to preserve our environment. Do your part and make this world safer for our children! Small steps can make giant changes! Let’s join together to save our planet and live in harmony with Nature. This planet was a gift from God – make sure you are not abusing that gift but nurturing it!
Live Natural, Live Organic, Live In Harmony With Nature!
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I thoroughy appreciate the key points in your post. Shopping and eating locally and seasonally is so much better for our health and for the environment. I love shopping and browsing at my local farmer’s market.In this way, I am able to know where my food was grown and when it was harvested. And I can ask questions. This is so important to me because as you mentioned, food that has traveled a long distance has to be picked way before it has ripened which decreases it’s nutritional value as affects the taste! I recently read that most apples in our neighborhood supermarkets are an average of nine months old and sometimes older. No wonder they sometimes taste so strange–they’ve been waxed and treated to last that long! I am sharing this post all over the place. Thank you for partying with us at Live it up at the “Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party”! I am happy that you were a part of this! Looking forward to seeing your wonderful posts again.
All the best!
Thank you Deborah. I appreciate you sharing my article. It is so important to educate people on these facts because there are so many people not aware of how bad the quality of food can be at times in some stores. We are work to hard for our money to waste it on foods that is not healthy. It is very smart to ask questions even at farmers markets. You will be seeing me again. Thanks for letting me participate in “Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party” Have a wonderful healthy day!
I love this, finding new ways of making things is my favorite, pinning to my veggie board. Thanks for sharing on Real Food Fridays.
Thanks for sharing this on Natural Living Link-up. You know, I’ve thought a lot about eating with the seasons, and how we humans have worked so hard to NOT have to eat with the seasons. We’ve developed a system in which we can have whatever we want, when we want it. I recall reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, and how they gathered berries and nuts in summer, relied on wild game in fall and winter, and fresh greens in spring. They didn’t seem to have a balanced diet from day to day, having to consume whatever was available, but they weren’t eating from factory farms, either. Laura lived till she was 90, which speaks for itself.
I totally agree with you Janet and I always loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. They ate what was available and I am sure that they had much healthier diets that many of us. Thanks for sharing and commenting.
Great information! It is so interesting to me how we just go to the grocery store and buy food and food-like products without any thought of where it came from or what it took to get it there. I used to avoid produce (gasp!) because it went bad so fast. It was a waste of money I though. When I started buying local, I was amazed at how much longer it lasted when I got it home. It sure does help that it’s not already 2 weeks old when I buy it. All my good produce was going bad while it was being shipped across the country. I waste much less by buying local. That saves me money even if I pay more for it. Waste is expensive!
Thanks Christina, It is amazing at the difference between local produce and commercial not just the expense but the nutritional value. We can all use a few extra pennies these days.