Let me ruin your meal...

overbite
Yo. I know this will get controversial, but why are we so addicted to out-of-season produce? I ordered a granola breakfast today because I didn't want a weekend style brunch and I could see no other option. Interestingly, my granola came studded with fresh strawberries, raspberries, grapes and melons. A luxurious feast? No. sorry to shatter the illusion but this breakfast was maybe more harm than good.

I was dismayed but ate some of it anyway. What was my problem? Well I have been trying to eat seasonally for almost a year now, and this breakfast was breaking all of the rules. It seems I have gotten to a point in my mentality where having strawberries on my plate when they must have had to come from Chile, or Egypt for that matter, is kind of an offense.

I have heard that produce travelling those distances comes at the cost of low-nutritional value, and that's no wonder when you consider how it's done. Produce is picked before being ripe and when it reaches its destination it is forced to ripen by applying ethylene gas. (the same chemical that emits naturally from onions causing neighborhood potatoes to go bad...) This is not how the organism/ plant ripens it's fruit. Ripening is a very energetic process that involves sunshine, air circulation, soil nutrients, and a plant's inherent chemicals. Without natural ripening a fruit cannot acheive it's full potential of vitamins and nutrients. They become "show" fruit. Kind of like those plastic or wax fruit bowls you tried to eat when you were a kid.

and then there's the pesticide ingestion to think about. Conventional (non-organic) strawberries and grapes, tend to be higher in pesticide residues. Pesticides kill birds, fish, "pests" and people. Sometimes people just die slowly as minute amounts of chemicals enter their bodies and wreak havok. What we need more than anything is help from our food friends in this polluted world. Anti-oxidants are an example of that kind of help we get from fruits and vegetables. they basically douse all the little chemical fires that happen inside us. Unfortunately when we eat fruit that is high in chemical residues and low in anti-oxidants we're working at counter-purposes. Yum, and just what I needed after a weekend full of booze...

So where am I going to get me some of that "good fruit" ? Right now, it's apples in Ontario, preserves like jam & jelly, rosehip and hibiscus flower tea, squash, cans of tomatoes, frozen cranberries etc.... And that's how it is at this time of year. Think of it this way, our ancestors did not drop dead in February...and they did not air freight in any bananas from Honduras. They were rugged people who worked physically demanding jobs in many cases and still managed to survive a harsh canadian winter. I revere them for that.

Trust me though, eating seasonally is not easy. Changing a diet from convenience based, thoughtless eating to a diet that nourished and energizes, without hogging up resources and adding carbon to the atmosphere, is a step-by-step gradual process. The reward is that the food is tasty, fresh and fulfills it's duty which is to help and protect you.