Posted in foodosophy on October 10, 2007 |
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The local food movement seems to be growing rapidly. I happen to be an advocate of buying locally produced foods.
It seems there are a variety of reasons for eating local. However, the most popular reason is not my primary reason. Often people advocate local foods because it is better for the environment, e.g it reduces the emissions produced by transportation. That is a noble reason, but it’s not my primary reason. (Note that eating globally rather than locally serves to give more people jobs. Eating locally might actually take a job away from some poor person in some third world country who really needs that job. There are always trade-offs.)
Another popular reason is to support your local economy. This again is not my primary reason. It’s a nice thought to support your “neighbors,” but in a national or global economy, everyone has the same level of opportunity as everyone else, they just have to compete on a much larger scale. If company X in California does it cheaper and better than company Y in Michigan (I live in Michigan), I’ll buy from X every time. If Y wants my business it needs to produce a better product so it can compete rather than laying guilt trips on me to buy local.
The bottom line is that eating locally is healthier. When food is transported long distances it requires extended storage, transport time, and shelf-life. Nearly all the bad things that are done to foods are done to increase shelf-life. Fat hydrogenation, preservatives, pasteurization, and refinement all increase shelf-life. Produce is picked green, refrigerated, and gassed to turn ripe colors at the end of its trip. The produce you buy in the grocery store is unripe and nutritionally inferior to ripe produce. Food not purchased locally is much likelier to be mass produced for a national or global market and whenever things are mass produced corners are cut and the quality goes down.
(Now there are exceptions to this. Some foods naturally have long shelf lives if handled properly, such as whole unmilled grains, tubers, roots, or dry goods like sucanat. Seafood is an essential part of a healthy diet and simply may not be available locally.)
It all comes down to quality. Most food that is produced on a national (or global) scale and shipped around the country (or world) tends to be of a lower quality than food produced locally by small producers who focus on quality. There are some exceptions, but in general, food, by its very nature, is of a higher quality when it’s local.
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