How often do you order guac when you go to Chipotle? Probably most times.
How many of you think that butterflies are pretty cool?
Yeah, I do too. See this piece of cleared land?
This is what happens when you’re eating your chips and guacamole or avocado toast. This is also the breeding area for monarch butterflied.
Illegal deforestation occurs everyday in heart of Mexico, away from authorities and the public eye so that farmers can plant avocado crops to be able to sell to the U.S. for profit. This is important because landscapes are disappearing to try to supply enough to meet the demand of vegetables year round.
Every time you go to the grocery store you pretty much see the same food in the produce section year round. But strawberries don’t grow in the winter and neither do oranges. So how is it possible that stores can see this stuff pretty much everyday? Well, they either ship it in from other countries that are in a different season than we are or they’re grown in greenhouses.
So why is that bad?
Well, the problem is that 50 years ago people still ate food with respect to the season because mass scale transfer of food just wasn’t developed. But as soon as the media and eventually social media took over, people began to think about how much they're missing out on when they can eat food year round.
Unfortunately, to be able to supply the demand of certain foods, other countries like Mexico are illegally trying to produce food to be able to meet the demand.
Workers are mistreated and land and habitats are being destroyed by the hands of the American market.
Restrictions on trade between Mexico and the U.S. used to be a lot stricter up until 2007, so now more and more of our produce is coming from Mexico. While they have a better climate to grow food for longer periods of time, that takes produce made by Americans out of the hands of markets because it’s cheaper to grow in Mexico.
So clearly there are some issues of eating things out of season. One benefit of eating in season is that it directly helps the American economy -- food produced by Americans is eaten by Americans. When land that is dedicated to seasonal crops are used for the crop of the season, there’s no need to destroy any other surrounding areas because farms physically won't be able to grow other crops.
Produce tastes so much better when it's produced in season because travel time is cut out. In season produce is fresher and sweeter and is naturally harvested so that fewer hormones and pesticides have to be used. There’s a reason why strawberries taste better in May than in December.
Food is cheaper. Cutting out long distance costs and the processes of trying to grow and harvest food out of season can be costly which drives up market prices.
There is also more nutritional value in fruits and vegetables because the fruit is naturally and not artificially trying to grow and ripen. Also, there’s less overseas contaminates from lack of soil regulation and herbicides and stuff like that.
As far as being able to eat food in season? It's easier than you think.
Rule of thumb is that citrus is a summer food, apples grow in the spring and most other vegetables like zucchini are also summer. Hence the name summer squash. Many grocery stores like Publix also say on the label if they’re selling something that is in season; those foods are usually on sale, too. Eating local also pretty much guarantees that the vegetable or fruit is in season and that it’s actually really good for your health. But if you really want to invest, there's a website called eatlocalgrown.com where you can put in your zipcode and it will tell you where local food is being sold in local grocery stores.
