Eating Local

Writing this blog encourages me to cook more mindfully. As part of that, I've been giving more thought lately to why I like local products so much.

Portland Farmers Market © Amy Nieto Photography 2011
I'm always on the lookout for local produce and dairy products, locally-raised meat, or locally-caught fish. Partly I choose them because I'm not from the Pacific Northwest, and exploring local products is part of exploring the area I now call home. But I also instinctively think they're better and, after some reflection, here's why:

• Local fruits and vegetables can be picked at the height of flavor -- when they're ripe and bursting with goodness. Those that have to be transported long distances must be picked when they're green and then ripened in warehouses or on your counter. There's no contest, for example, between the taste of a typical supermarket tomato and a vine-ripened one from a local farm stand.
• Because it doesn't have to travel as far, local food is also likely to be fresher and, hence, contain more nutrients. According to a study done at Iowa State University, if you live in Iowa, for example, a local apple travels about 60 miles to reach you, whereas a conventionally-sourced US-grown apple travels over 1700 miles¹²³! Thus a conventional apple may travel a week or more, and that translates to its losing important nutrients.
• Local food tends to be available in a wider range of interesting and delicious varieties and cultivars. Varieties that will be transported long distances are limited only to those tough enough to withstand the rigors of shipping, and for which there is a big market. In Oregon there's no better example than strawberries -- Copyright Amy Nieto Photography 2011
  our local varieties are small and a little gnarled-looking, too delicate to ship fresh, and only available a few weeks every year, but they're sugary lumps of intense strawberry deliciousness -- much better tasting than their more perfect-looking better-traveling mass market brethren!
• Buying local products supports your local economy. When you buy from local farmers, much of the money they spend, in turn, goes to supporting other businesses and charities in your surrounding community.
• Buying local products is kinder to the environment than buying those that have to be shipped by planes, trains, boats, and/or trucks and protected by large amounts of packaging.
• Since most GM (Genetically Modified) foods come from large industrial farms, I think it's easier to avoid GM products when you shop locally. Plus you may have more opportunity to learn about the food by talking with the farmer and asking about GMO use.

So next time you're at the grocery store, check out the "locally-grown" foods. Or seek out a farmer's market or farm stand. Your tastebuds, your body, your community and the earth will be glad you did!

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¹Pirog, Rich and Benjamin, Andrew. "Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local Versus Conventional Produce Sales in Iowa Institutions." Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, July 2003.
²Note that this average distance traveled was for apples grown in the continental US. If New Zealand apples had been included in the mix, the distance would have been greater!
³And if you think apples travel a long distance, look at the figures for carrots, lettuce, broccoli, etc.!

Whole Grains

Greek Night

Lately we've been eating Greek salads. We generally eat a low-sodium diet, so kalamatas and feta are a treat. To round out the meal, I typically marinate & grill a butterflied chicken breast, that we split, and add a small grilled potato or some brown rice. It's a simple meal that uses ingredients we usually have on hand and takes about an hour to prepare.

From a workflow perspective, first I prepare the chicken and get it marinating in the refrigerator. Then I cut the veggies for the Greek salad and get them marinating. While those sit, I prepare lettuce for the salad and halve a couple of small potatoes, that I microwave for 4-5 minutes for finishing on the grill. I preheat the grill and then grill the potatoes and chicken together. While that happens, I set the table, toss the Greek salad and get the plates ready.

Here are the recipes:

Greek Salad for 4:
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 1/2 tablespoons wine and/or balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

cucumber, halved lengthwise, sliced crosswise
tomato, cut into wedges
yellow bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
red onion, thinly sliced
pitted kalmata olives
Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces

feta cheese, crumbled

Use vegetable and cheese proportions to your taste. Don't be afraid to vary them or make substitutions, based on what you have in your refrigerator and pantry.

Whisk olive oil, vinegar, oregano and lemon peel in a bowl to blend. Add cucumber, tomatoes, pepper, onion and olives, and allow to marinate for 1/2 hour. Add lettuce and toss to mix and coat. Serve and sprinkle with the feta.

Greek Chicken for 4
1/2 cup low fat plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoons dried oregano
2 large chicken breasts, butterflied

In a shallow baking dish, mix the yogurt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and oregano. Place the chicken in the dish, and turn to coat. Cover, and marinate in the refrigerator for 1/2 hr to 3 hrs. Grill the chicken on high indirect heat until it's done (5 min per side for our grill). Slice into strips and serve.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

This catchphrase from Unhappy Meals, a 2007 essay by Michael Pollan of the New York Times, really speaks to me. Focus on eating a diverse balanced whole-food-oriented diet, rather than human-designed food products. Moderate the amount eaten. Finally, eat the way our ancestors did – a plant-based diet, richer in leaves and lighter on seeds, treating meat ala Thomas Jefferson -- “as a condiment to the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.”

Pollan describes how a 1977 US Senate committee drafted guidelines calling for a reduction of meat and dairy product consumption to reduce coronary heart disease that resulted in a political firestorm propelling the US down the path to a new dietary language -- one that shunned plain talk about whole foods, in favor of terms like cholesterol and saturated fats that were guaranteed not to offend powerful food lobbies. He argues that our growing view of food as a “delivery system for nutrients” is responsible for the rise of processed designer foods and resultant health problems like obesity and diabetes.

Pollan goes on to talk about how the things we think we know about the relationship between diet and health are often based on bad science. Food science studies ignore complex interactions -- they don't study nutrients in the context of food or food in the context of diet or diet in the context of lifestyle. And some of the most rigorous, extensive, long-term studies are based on people self-reporting every 3 months what they remember eating -- who can remember what they ate 3 months ago? who knows how it was prepared? and who will admit to eating more than a maintenance-level of calories or greater than a 4 oz. "medium serving size" of meat at a meal?

He discusses principles of healthy eating and ends with some rules of thumb, collected in the course of preparing the article:

1. Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid food products that come bearing health claims - they're apt to be heavily processed.
3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number -- or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible; go to the farmer's market.
5. Eat better quality food and eat less.
6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
7. Eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture. If it weren't a healthy diet, the culture wouldn't still be around.
8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden.
9. Eat like an omnivore. Add new species to your diet.

I found Pollan's article a compelling read, and it's made me look at my diet differently. Having successfully lost 30 lbs following the Zone Diet, I came to view food as fats, proteins, and high- or low-glycemic carbs. I'm going to try getting away from that and viewing food as, well, food again. Give the article a try and see what you think!