The Benefits of Seasonal Food and Seasonal Eating (Shift Your Relationship With Food)
The easy way to (re)connect with nature
Walk into any grocery store chain in North America and you would be hard pressed to know that food has seasons. You would, however, know which major holiday was coming up because of the decorations and the specials.
It’s a total shame.
The globalization of our food system means that the fresh food sections of these stores: fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat and the bakery, are constantly filled with a wide selection of items.
Now why is that a bad thing?
Because seasonal foods hold the highest nutritional value with the lowest environmental footprint of anything in the store. And seasonal eating is the best way to stay connected to the natural world with its amazing seasonal cycles.
Once upon a time, seasonal eating was common knowledge.
Now the long-lost art of preparing seasonal food is relegated to one-off items like pumpkin-spiced lattes and a turkey for Thanksgiving. Too few people even stop to consider what is actually in season, and the stores are too busy selling you on convenience to promote what is healthy.
Let’s take a closer look at seasonal foods and seasonal eating, and see what benefits they have to offer us in our all-too-often hectic lives.
What is seasonal food?
The simplest definition of “seasonal food” is the food that grows locally within a region and that becomes mature and available at different times of the year. The typical groupings of food go something like this:
Spring brings out fresh, fast growing greens and sometimes bulbs that have been overwintered
Early summer brings the first flush of short-season berries, fast growing tree fruits such as cherries, more greens, and the first tastes of more substantial vegetables like baby carrots, beets, and broccoli.
Summer brings on the heat and the rapid growth of heat loving vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, more berries and early types of fruit like apricots or plums.
Fall brings the big harvests of summer vegetables, long growing winter storage vegetables, late berry crops, major tree fruit and nut harvests, and grains (There is a reason Thanksgiving is celebrated in the fall with the big harvests!).
Winter foods depend on how talented the food keeper is – and include foods that have been stored, as well as the overwinter types of vegetables like potatoes, winter squash and cabbage. Some types of pears and many apples are likewise quite easy to overwinter as well.
The exact details of which fruits and vegetables are available, at what times of year, depends on the growing region. But the general concepts remain the same.
As the weather warms up through to its summer peak, the variety of foods available shifts from spring cool season crops to heat-loving summer crops. As the temperatures start to wane, peak harvests of long-growing foods happen just before the temperatures dive back down before winter.
In the past, meat, dairy and eggs were seasonal too.
Spring time brings the birth of livestock babies, and the availability of dairy.
Birds start laying eggs in the spring and continue through the summer.
Both birds and livestock that can be taken as food without depleting the flocks and herds are usually big enough to harvest in the fall.
But these seasonal patterns have been erased by globalization, and we see the effects of this on both our health and our planet.