NutritionQuarterly_Summer2020

Seasonal Eating For Better Health Written by Owen Rothstein for Simple Again So, is it locavore or localvore? According to the Oxford University Press, both forms of the word are used to describe people who only eat food grown within a prescribed radius (say 100 miles) of where they’re eating it. The first version was locavore and started in San Francisco in the mid 2000s. That version was awarded the Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2007. The second version – localvore – sprung out of other communities a bit later and seems mostly attributed to Vermont. Whichever version you prefer (I’ll use localvore going forward, in honor of my East Coast roots), the movement has become the darling of marquis chefs, hippie types, millennials and so-called health nuts across the nation. I can see the cache that it has from a marketing perspective — the whole Farm-to-Table idea — but is there any substance or science to it? Perhaps history can shed some light. Throughout history, humans have eaten foods that were grown locally and seasonally. It wasn’t an idea or a movement, we simply didn’t have a choice. Kill a bison that had fed on local grasses and drag it back to the cave. Pluck a ripe orange, apple or plum off of the local tree and eat it before it rots. And so it went for thousands of years. We evolved eating this way. Today we have access to all types of foods from all parts of the globe during all seasons. Modern technology has changed everything about our diets, from the foods we eat — like overly-processed foods — to when we eat those foods. We’re lucky to have this luxury, but are we actually doing the right thing for our bodies or the planet? Nutrition Quarterly · 2020 – Volume 3 14 The Good Life