The Benefits of Eating According to the Season

Seeing the loaded produce section as you walk into your local supermarket makes it easy to forget that most fruits and vegetables grow best only at certain times of the year. Even though these foods might now be available to us anytime, the benefits of eating according to the season are huge.

Christmas oranges were once a treat kids would find in their stockings during the holidays. Now, they’re almost always stocked in the nearest grocery store. While we enjoy the convenience of this, it’s important to remember that we need to grow and transport food in different ways for it to be possible.

The Benefits of Eating According to the Season

To grow food out of season, farms use additional pesticides, some of which aren’t healthy to ingest. Furthermore, the regulations we have for growing food in places like Canada and the U.S. are often stricter than in the countries we import much of our produce from.

Then there is the challenge of keeping the fruits and vegetables fresh on their journeys - sometimes halfway across the world - before they land on the shelves in our supermarkets. The bananas that spoil on our counters in a matter of days have, in many cases, been harvested from their trees weeks prior.

Transported before they ripen, many fruits and vegetables are treated with agents, such as ethylene gas, to artificially speed up the ripening process. Preservatives are also used to keep foods looking fresh long enough to travel from the tropical environments they are grown in to the more temperate regions they are usually consumed in.

Eating according to the season, and buying locally grown foods as much as possible, can help you avoid some of the chemicals used in preservatives and ripening agents. But, the benefits of eating in-season produce go beyond this. Foods that are grown and harvested seasonally are often juicier, tastier, and healthier. 

Harvesting fruits and vegetables at their peak ripeness allows these plants to develop and maintain their maximum nutritional value, including important vitamins we need in our diets. 

Buying Local is Buying Seasonal

Buying locally grown foods is one of the best ways to reap the benefits of eating according to the season. This food is much more likely to be organic and harvested when it’s perfectly ripe, because it isn’t being transported as far. 

This is a great opportunity to support farmers in our area and reduce our carbon footprints that build up when we buy food that has been sent in planes, boats, and trucks across the world.

You’ve probably noticed that the produce in your neighbourhood farmer’s market looks a little different than what you find at the grocery store. That’s because local growers don’t need to practice selective breeding, a method that favours shelf life over taste and nutrition.

With farmer’s markets in full swing, there might be no better time than summer to enjoy the benefits of eating according to the season. The Food Network and Chatelaine have put together lists of some of the best farmer’s markets in Canada to help point you in the right direction. The province of Ontario even has a guide on the months that the most popular fruits and vegetables are in season. 

And, when you get ready to cook up some of the tasty goods, Feasting at Home, Delish, and Tasty have a whole host of great summer recipes to try your hand at!