Locally grown fruits and vegetables typically are packed with more nutrients and better flavor than foods transported from farther away. But nutrition and flavor aren’t the only benefits. Eating local produce helps your community — and the environment — in other, more surprising ways.
Atlantic Health Registered Dietitian Katherine Mott, MS, RD, shares the benefits of choosing local produce and the broader impact it has on our communities.
Freshness and flavor from local farmers markets
Farmers and others who offer locally grown foods at a market usually picked the food less than 24 hours earlier, sometimes the morning they go to market. That means it’s had the chance to fully and naturally ripen, ensuring it offers the greatest nutrition and maximum freshness.
“At the peak of ripeness, fruits and vegetables not only have better flavor, but they usually have more of their nutrients preserved,” says Mott. “Foods like fresh produce lose their nutrients quickly. So it’s not just a noticeably better taste, you also get the maximum nutritional value when you eat it soon after it’s picked.”
Supporting your family’s good health
One of the best ways to eat a healthy diet is to choose fruits and vegetables in a mix of different colors. This ensures you get a good variety of nutrients and healthy antioxidants.
“Fruits and vegetables have different phytochemicals, like polyphenols, that are good for your health. In some darkly colored fruits and vegetables, you may have more powerful amounts of those phytochemicals, which provide key antioxidants to your body,” Mott says. “But the most important thing is to eat fresh produce of all colors. Think about it like the colors of the rainbow. Each different fruit or vegetable contains a specific family of antioxidants.”
When we fill ourselves with healthy whole foods, we’re less likely to eat highly processed foods filled with saturated fats, sugars and sodium. That’s another way that eating a healthy mix of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables helps protect our health and overall wellness.
An additional benefit of eating local produce is that it likely contains fewer preservatives, chemical ripening agents and other additives. These chemicals are needed when food is transported long distances. The closer to your home the food is grown, the less likely these were used. It’s also worth noting that the shorter the transportation time, the lower the risk of contamination from harmful bacteria.
“The less those fruits and vegetables have to travel, the better,” says Mott.
Supporting your local farmers
Buying local produce not only provides jobs and revenue for local farms, it can transform the way you think about food, as well as the way you prepare it and the amount you enjoy it.
“Farmers are a great resource for understanding more about the foods you eat,” says Mott. “Climate and seasonal weather have a big impact on our fruits and vegetables. For example, farmers can help you learn about the impact of more or less rain than usual for the area. You wouldn’t understand that if you went to the grocery store and bought strawberries that were grown in another part of the country.”
Mott encourages people to stop by and chat with a local farmer or the people working at a farm stand. “Be curious and ask questions. Ask what’s particularly good that season. Ask how to tell if a fruit is really ripe, or what time of year is best for different vegetables. Ask what practices they follow to raise and harvest the crops. Then you’ll really understand what makes local food taste so good,” she says.
Supporting your local community
“If we want to drive around and see open space and beautiful farms, we have to support them,” Mott says. “There’s a phrase we use to describe this idea: you eat your view. Eating your view is about supporting local farms, the environment and the agriculture in your local community, maybe even a farm in another part of the state.”
Buying produce at a local farmers market or farm stand allows the grower to continue their efforts. In turn, this expands access and affordability, and it encourages healthy foods and meals for your neighbors.
Buying locally grown produce also helps sustain local bee populations. “The bees are harvesting the pollen from fruits and plants flowering around us, offering a healthy transfer of organisms,” Mott says. “This pollination is very important for growing local fruits and vegetables. Also, some patients tell me eating local honey has actually helped reduce their allergy symptoms.”
Supporting the environment
Buying local produce may not have a huge global impact, but it does impact the environment in our region.
“Fewer transportation trucks on the road means less traffic and less air pollution,” explains Mott. “It really does matter because it affects air quality and helps preserve open space, which is important.”
Produce that moves quickly from farm to market also requires less packaging and processing for less waste and a lower carbon footprint.
Tips for buying and eating local whole foods
- Ask your grocery store manager if they label locally sourced products so you can easily identify them
- Buy produce fresh when it’s in season, then freeze or preserve extra to eat throughout the year
- Dine at farm-to-table restaurants if possible when you eat out or, if a restaurant advertises which ingredients were locally sourced, order those items from the menu
- Expand your palette by trying new foods based on what’s at peak freshness that month
- If farmers market prices seem a little high, search for a smaller produce stand
- Join a local food co-op that will deliver fresh produce to your home each week
- Plant your own garden, or team up with neighbors to start a community garden where you share the work and the produce
- To save money, visit a farm that allows you to pick food yourself, and then pay for what you pick
Even though local produce tastes better and helps your community, Mott says it really doesn’t matter where you’re getting fresh produce as long as you’re eating it every day.
“There’s a time and a place for local produce, and there’s a time and a place for buying imported, for example when you want a food that isn’t locally sourced or easily accessible,” Mott says. “The most important thing is that you’re getting good quality produce in your diet as consistently as possible. And remember to eat whole foods in all the colors of the rainbow.”
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