The Importance of Eating Local!

So why should we eat local?  We hear about it, see some cool bumper stickers.  But why is there such an interest in eating local?

Well, for starters, eating local means we know where our food comes from.  We know who grows it, can ask them how they grow it, what chemicals they use, or don’t use.  Major food production corporations don’t need to tell us what chemicals, or pesticides, they use, according to the FDA regulations, if it’s below a certain percentage.  Most of us have no idea what we put into our bodies on a daily basis. 

How can one eat local?

We can go to local farmers markets, or find farms in the area.  On Aquidneck Island, there’s a fantastic little farm called Sweetberry Farm.  They grow and sell their own products, whether you go apple picking yourself, or choose to buy their homemade hot apple cider, made with the freshest of ingredients.  If you’ve never been to a farmers market, I suggest you go.  The atmosphere is full of positive energy, and many of the people selling their products are more than willing to talk about their products, and what they use or don’t use to help their products grow.  Some are organic farmers, and work with the land in order to produce a good crop.  

Check out Sweetberry Farm's Website here: http://www.sweetberryfarm.com/ 

If you go to a supermarket, and pick the bread off the shelf, the fruit out of a bin, you really don’t know who was involved in producing this, how this product got to the shelf, and where it actually came from.  Is it domestic, produced in our own country?  Was it shipped from overseas?  We must raise awareness to what we are investing in.  Food is energy, it’s a life-source, our life-source, and to not consider the root source of our energy is like putting on a blindfold and choosing not to see.  By not consuming from major corporations, you actually can decrease your carbon footprint.  Shipping foods and goods from all over the world or even across the country is expensive, and taxing to the environment.  Our society has become accustomed to living by instant gratification, and having all varieties of fruits and vegetables available to us at any time of the year even though they’re not in season, and not native to our lands.  

We don’t even take the time to think about it.  If strawberries are ripe at the end of August and September, then how on earth can we get them in December, March, May?  Where are they being grown and how are they being grown?  What chemicals are added to them to manipulate their natural growth cycle? 

We can all be more responsible citizens of the world.  We just need to think.  Starting with food, something we put in our bodies every single day, we can make a conscious effort to think.  You can help out the environment, and your own body, by being aware of the food you consume, and shifting where you shop to eating local.  

By: Molly Jacobus