Many high end restaurants have their own local organic gardens nowadays and many top athletes follow a seasonal diet. Why is that?
Well, for many reasons. Some obvious some not so much.
With the improvements in transportation and global integration we are used, and take for granted, to be eating bananas from Ecuador, Swiss chocolate and jam from Spain in the same meal. To eat tomatoes in winter and cabbage in summer. And the list goes on, but hopefully you get the picture.
With exceptions, we don't even know what is grown where and when anymore.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Having access to the whole world is a great achievement. But it is also a problem if we want to do it all the time. It's a bigger problem if we are "forced" to do it all the time. It's a problem both for the environment and for our bodies.
Food is information. Plants produce phytochemicals to take care of business where they are and because they can't move they are darn good at it. If we eat a plant that is grown in the same location we are at, their reaction to the environment protects us too. It is important though that the plant is not tinkered with added chemicals because they also create a reaction that will be passed to us.
So this in a nutshell the secret about eating local and in season: the local plants develop what they need to face the environment and they pass that to us.
If, on the other hand, we eat food from all over the place, we create confusion in the body and confusion derives in des-ease. Of course this doesn't mean we can't have that chocolate or the jam or the banana, it just means that they should be the exception, not the rule if we want a healthy life.
Zero Km food is taking local to the extreme. It's a system where most of the food should be produced within one kilometer around. It is a bit extreme and I'm not sure how possible it is for most of us, but it's certainly an interesting concept and one we should strive for if we want to design a world where we and the environment see eye to eye.
It's the most efficient solution for the environment. Think on the transportation, plastic, space for storage, refrigeration and chemical products due to the artificial environments of monoculture crops... all that solved at the same time. Think on the necessary rate of construction vs non construction spaces it requires. Think on how beautiful it could be to walk around.
This ties with the idea of edible landscaping in public places from one of my previous posts and of course with permaculture.
In a nutshell, zero km food cares for the environment, cares for people and fair share enters in the design per se. I firmly believe that having local food available is essentially both a human and nature rights.
Thanks for reading.
Al comments are more than welcome.
Imgs: stock photos from Canva.