Why we should all try harder to understand what is in season

Seasonal eating – another post-Christmas dietary propriety or something that we could all try a little harder to exercise when we next go shopping for food? As people become more health conscience seasonal diets are growing in popularity, but in days past seasonal diets were normality, one simply ate what nature had to offer.

Seasonal food is defined as food that can be sourced, purchased and consumed around the time they are harvested therefore its always fresh. Plant seasons are based on their growing cycle, they are seasonal when ready to harvest, many meats and fish are also seasonal; game is eaten throughout autumn and winter when the meat is at its leanest and they’re not breeding. Whereas salmon is traditionally consumed from early summer to early autumn after their recrudescence to the river of their birth.

Changing to a more seasonal based diet can be hard when its always summer on supermarket shelves and general knowledge amongst consumers of British seasonal foods is low. A poll conducted by BBC Good Food found that out of 2000 people, only 5% could say when Blackberries were at their best whilst only 4% knew when Plums were in, this despite 78% claiming to shop seasonally and 86% asseverating to the importance of more seasonal diets.

The UK boasts a wide variety of home-grown fruits and veg throughout the year. The great British Strawberry sold on roadsides is the marker of summertime. Yet when nature prevents us from growing food outdoors, supermarkets have turned to shipping it in from all corners of the earth, and fast perishing products like strawberries or avocados have only one method of travel: by airplane.

Seasonal eating goes hand in hand with sourcing local produce as it doesn’t need transporting excessive distances, resulting in fresher better tasting food with a lower environmental impact. When harvested at the correct time, nutritional content is at its’ peak, opposed to an early harvest so the produce better withstands shipping, but the food has not been given the time it needs to reach maturity and therefore peak nutrition. Excessive food miles are a cause of concern; importing highly perishable goods long distances requires a huge feat of engineering. Food must stay refrigerated the whole journey, usually in an oxygen-free environment to prevent oxidation, this means storing it in sulphur dioxide or 1MCP (1-methylcyclopropene), these, along with countless other pesticides, fungicides and more…sounds scrummy. In contrast; seasonal food requires less inputs to produce as it is being grown in conditions most conducive to what it needs naturally. Therefore, farmers won’t need to add as many inputs to fight nature, thus the environmental costs of seasonal food production are generally significantly lower than imported food, even without factoring energy used in transport.

Foods nutritional density reduces after harvest, food that is harvested early for transportation reasons then undergoes a long journey around the world, by the time it ends on your plate it will have lost significant nutritional density, one study showed that nutritionally rich Broccoli can lose almost 60% of its flavonoids during a longer transportation. So, we a buying food from around the world under the guise of being healthy, the reality is imported food costs significantly more whilst containing a lower nutritional content therefore flavour. Just as nature has different needs throughout the seasons, so do people, a more seasonal diet helps to support your bodies nutritional requirements throughout the year, for example summer foods generally have a higher water content to help keep us hydrated, summer fruits have higher levels of antioxidants and natural anti-histamine properties during peak allergies season, eating seasonally meets your bodies seasonal changes.

A rule for life

Like all dietary fad’s, they shouldn’t be a strict rule that eventually dictates how you live. Unfortunately, today we have a false view on the reality of food and we are used to having everything readily available. There are great benefits of including more seasonal produce in our diets, but if you like strawberries all year, then have them all year, if your dietitian or doctor told you to eat more veg, then eat more veg. But remember every time you buy Peruvian Asparagus or Kenyan Spring Onions, you are casting a vote to the supermarkets to continue with the same practices and we can all agree the status quo is not working for humans and planet alike. If the environment and your health matters to you, then next time you go shopping spare a thought for where your food came from. Maybe change a few usual purchases or heckle the floor manager in a supermarket as to why the apples they’re selling are from the USA when ours are also in season, remember the consumer is king, and we cast a vote for change with what we buy, if we stopped buying Bolivian blueberries, they would stop selling them…its as simple as that.

Link to see what is in season: Seasonal food update