A reader from NH posed this question which I did my best to answer:
My family is researching the possibility of commiting to our local economy by becoming locavores. Currently we live in NH, my question is how healthy is this prospect for New Englanders? with 2 growing boys, fresh fruit and veggies from fall to late spring are hard to come by locally. What are our options?
I won’t comment on the health aspect of this as I am a student of this subject, and not an expert, and certainly not a nutritionist. That said, I think any approach to locavorism needs to be reasonable. I often look at it as doing what is reasonably best. Living on Cape Cod in the winter presents challenges. There is little local food grown (though I did just discover that kale will grow in winter). People who lived in these regions prior to modern times relied heavily on hunted game and dried and/or preserved foods. This isn’t practical or even palatable for most of us today.
Part of my food background includes a period of time studying macrobiotics. Now this can be a pretty extreme diet and I do not follow it these days (one look at my photo will confirm that!), but there are some principles that I still take to heart. One is to eat foods for the season. This means more salads and lighter foods in the summer, more squashes and heartier foods in the winter. My menus in winter tend to focus on more fish, squashes, potatoes, dried grains and hearty greens (like kale and collards). We do stray outside of this depending on the occasion, but this is the heart.
When sourcing food “off season” when local growers are dormant I try to do the best I can. I have an informal hierarchy of quality. Local organic is best. Then regional organic, followed by national organic (grown in the US). I almost never buy produce grown outside the US for a couple of reasons- I have no assurances of what “organic” means where it is grown, and I think food loses energy when transported long distances (hence regional is better than national).
We are fortunate here in the lower Cape area to have a great produce shop, health food store and butcher/deli with quality meats. So off-season when the farmer’s markets are closed, we can get produce and meats that are more lo cal than what is in the super market, though certainly not grown up the street. My personal mission is to buy no food from the chain supermarket. I’d check around your neighborhood and region to see what’s available. Also check to see if there are any organic/vegetarian groups in your area.
You may also wish to check out Slow Food, which is a worldwide organization that promotes clean, fair and good food. There is a NH Seacoast chapter, they may have more ideas, plus they have an active blog: http://slowfoodseacoast.blogspot.com/
If you haven’t already I suggest reading two books by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food.
Hope this is helpful. Best of fortune moving forward!
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