Wednesday, November 6, 2013

What's More Important: Reducing the Carbon Footprint or Eating Healthy?

Source: http://thelivinglabiesd.wordpress.com/
Do you know where your food comes from? No, the answer to that is not Whole Foods or Trader Joe's or your local supermarket. 

My question is more deep-rooted than that. Do you know where your food is produced? Have you ever read the labels on say the produce you pick up at the store or read the origins of your fruits/vegetables? In this era, when everyone wants everything all the time food travels a long distance to enhance your palate making most items available year round. But have you thought of what goes into this food travel? The amount of gas utilized in shipping your food to your doorstep? Or the carbon footprint it leaves in its global travels? Most of us don’t think of this but this is a growing issue. 

The buy local movement is a part of this solution. Buying what grows around you is the best way to avert such crisis. But sometimes you cannot. For example, I buy organic bananas – but in my local food store these come from South America. Now I admit this is a long distance for my bananas to travel but the bananas produced here are laden with pesticides and I don’t fancy them at all.
So what is the answer? Frankly, I don’t know. My desire to eat healthy overshadows my desire to reduce the carbon footprint of my food. And then there is winter when local farming is all but dead. For now, I tell myself at least during summer, I make it a point to source as much local food as possible. 

What do you think is the answer to this conundrum?

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