Local Produce is Fresher & Healthier

Local food is fresher and healthier! We have written about veg like sweetcorn and asparagus that are best cooked when ‘just picked’ for flavour and nutrients. And a friend of mine will make sure the water to cook his sweetcorn is boiling on the stove before he picks a home grown cob. Blog here

This is true for most fruit and veg that naturally begin to degrade and effectively rot once they are picked. We really should not buy produce that looks OK when on the supermarket shelf but has been slowly degrading throughout the long supply chain.

This is exactly why we should eat seasonal produce and why at BigBarn we have our seasonal food week blogs throughout the year and link to a special map for each seasonal product; asparagus, beans, apples, beetroot, etc…

fresh healthy home grown food

These seasonal products are part of our ecosystem and lead us on to the health qualities of local food. We have been eating seasonal foods for 2 million years and only in the last 100 years have confused our bodies with processed and ‘all year round’ products that have been imported.

Perhaps fresh seasonal foods are a lot more healthy than we think? Especially if we eat more raw produce or meals made with fresh local ingredients. They are typically full of natural vitamins and antioxidants. Compare this to processed food where the natural qualities of the ingredients have been destroyed and unhealthy preservatives added.

Local also means the growing of old, regional, varieties of fruit and veg that have great flavour but have been rejected by the supermarkets because they do not have a long shelf life. Perhaps some of these old varieties combat many ailments and even allergies like hay fever?

When it comes to health and wellbeing ‘local’ can also mean the satisfaction and achievement of growing your own at home or at school, and the process of trading swapping or sharing to build inclusive, sustainable, caring, communities around food.

At BigBarn we have been working on this for over 10 years and clearly see the triple whammy of food growing, cooking and trading in every school:
1. better more holistic education
2. healthier, inclusive, caring, community
3. food security through encouraging more local food production

Please check out our schools page for more