The Benefits of Local Produce

This is a freelance article by Helen Burgh.

Local Produce - Is It REALLY Better For You?

It’s an oft-made assumption that locally-grown food is somehow more nutritious than commercially produced and shipped products. Although there is certainly a good deal of truth in the matter, I am concerned that many of my customers believe that eating just a little local produce is as good as eating a lot of more commercialized produce. “If it’s seven-a-day (or five-a-day, or nine-a-day or whatever your local authority has deemed most appropriate) for supermarket fruit and veg, is it just three or four a day for local, organic stuff?” is a question I’m asked surprisingly often. Ultimately, I’m afraid, the answer is “No” – but there’s a bit more to it than a flat negative. After all, I wouldn’t promote locally grown foods above all others if I didn’t think that they were basically healthier than anything you can buy in a supermarket! This is admittedly rather confusing so, as a nutritionist, I feel that it is impingent upon me to set this matter straight once and for all!

Quality Over Quantity?

First, that vexed question, “Can I eat less local produce than supermarket produce, and feel the same benefits?” As I mentioned earlier, the answer to that one is “No”, but this does not mean that the local stuff isn’t basically healthier than the supermarket stuff. While you may well be getting more basic nutrients from locally grown produce, this does not mean that you don’t have to eat as much to gain the much-lauded benefits of a fruit-and-veg rich diet. For a start, nobody is quite agreed on how many pieces of greenery constitutes a ‘healthy’ diet. The British used to swear by five-a-day, but recently put it up to seven. The amount varies all over the USA, depending upon the ideas of your local health authority. Various diets advocate the uninhibited use of fruit and vegetables, while others restrict your intake of certain vegetables based upon carb levels. As a basic rule of thumb, the more fruit and veg that you can possibly cram onto your crockery, the better. And this isn’t just to do with vitamins and minerals. See, fruit and veg is also full of fiber – a factor which does not alter significantly across the production scale - and this, more than anything else, is why you still need to eat plenty of locally-grown greens. As well as being amazingly good for your digestive system, fiber takes a long time for your body to process, meaning that you feel fuller for longer. If you’re dedicated to leading a healthy lifestyle, taking in calories in a form which is not only great for your health, but also keeps you feeling full and less likely to gorge on unhealthy snacks is a pretty good way to go about it. Medical experts are even trialling the manipulation of fiber in weight-loss techniques, so keeping yourself topped up with local carrots will put you ahead of the game when it comes to shedding the pounds and keeping them off!

Worth The Extra Money

So, if you have to eat as much locally-grown produce as you do supermarket produce, why bother spending all that extra money in the first place? Why not just head to the supermarket and do a bulk buy? Well, for a start, locally-grown stuff does not actually have to be that much more expensive than supermarket produce. Indeed, if you’ve got the space, the time, and the wherewithal then you can grow your own veg relatively easily – thus saving you a great many dollars when it comes to harvest time! You could even sell what you’ve grown, and those in the know (nutritionally speaking) will be lining up to buy the fruits of your toil. In fact, while buying local may be a tiny bit more expensive in the short term, in the longer term it’s likely to economically benefit not only you but your entire community. However, none of this is explaining why locally grown stuff is nutritionally better for you – which is what I initially promised – so I’ll skip right to the good bit…

Invisible Quality

Here’s the thing: when a big, commercial producer is growing, say, an apple, he or she will judge that apple not on its nutritional value, but on various other factors. Chief among these are its visual appeal to the consumer, and its ability to withstand long-distance transportation without showing signs of wear and tear. They will therefore end up breeding apples specifically for these qualities – resulting in big, watery apples with nice, shiny red skins but a lot less nutritional value than they would otherwise have. A local producer does not have to worry about transporting his or her apples, meaning that those they sell tend to be a lot more ‘natural’ and healthy than those which undergo extensive transportation. Furthermore, it is worth noting that any fruit or vegetables’ nutritional value degrades over time. In order to get the maximum nutritional benefit, greens should be eaten as fresh as possible – which generally means getting them locally (ideally, pick or dig your own!)

Differing Methods

A lot depends, of course, on the method of production used. In general, supermarket produce is a lot more likely to have been grown with the use of industrial pesticides and herbicides. These prevent any insects or othe plants from competing with the crop, but in so doing they lower the essential quality of the soils and thus the nutritional quality of any produce grown in those soils. Local produce, meanwhile (particularly if it is organic) is more likely to be grown using more natural methods of fertilization – manure, compost, or cover-crops, for example – which improve the quality of the soil and thus make it more able to imbue any plant grown in it with a payload of nutrients. Interestingly, research into allergies is increasingly showing that it may be a lack of exposure to the essential components of our own immediate environment which are causing us to develop allergies. Eating local, organic food is a good way to get your body used to the ways of the local soils and so forth – kind of like vaccinating yourself. People have been using local honey for decades as a ‘cure’ for hayfever – and it works. This principle is much the same.

As Nature Intended

In short, therefore, your fruit and veg is always healthiest if it is grown as closely as possible to the way Nature intended – and that, for most of us, means buying local.