Incorporate Local and Organic Food in Your Life

Eating healthy is so important, so finding local, organic and sustainable food is so vital when considering ones overall health. In a shaky economy, we must not only look out for our bankbooks but also for our health. Eating fresh and local organic food is a great way of supporting your local farmers, but more importantly supporting your body’s overall health and function. Local and organic food proves to provide a healthier and more responsible life for your body and soul.

The quickest and easiest way to dial into these delicious resources is by checking out LocalHarvest.org. This website provides a milieu of choices as to what kind of food/shops/farms/markets you are looking for in your community. It also lets you search by state, city or zip code to best get the results you are looking for.

On Local Harvest, there are a number of types of food stores that you can search for. To name a few,

CSA: Community Supported Agriculture, this type of business has individuals buy into shares on the farm to invest in the growth of local and seasonal, usually organic vegetables that you pick up to enjoy bi weekly.

Farms: Local farmers that sell directly to consumers and that do not go through stores, or a third party. The less hands that touch your food the fresher and the safer.

Local Restaurants: You may ask, what is the difference between a local and non local restaurant? Well its simple. Do they ship in food or do they buy from local farmers and support local agriculture? Are they a chain that is available all over the country or are they a local shop specific to your community? Local restaurants again bring your dollars back to the community and can many times buy from local and organic growers.

Grocery/Food Co-op: This is a fun and important part of every sustainable food community. Becoming a part of a co-op means that you are now a part of the solution for sustainable eating and living, not to mention are filling your fridge with local organic food. As a member, you are part owner of the store and have a say as to how things are handled.

Don’t ever forget: food is important! Where it comes from, how you get it, how it is grown are all things you should be concerned about. Using localharvest.org will not only connect you with your new community, but will also lead you down a road of long term health and sustainability.

Change You Can Bite Into

In 1971 Frances Moore Lappe released her now-classic book, “Diet For A Small Planet”. This groundbreaking book helped millions of readers understand the root causes for hunger and her core message was that food remains the central issue through which to understand world politics. As a continuation of her message of how the food system is broken and what needs to happen to fix it, her daughter Anna Lappe recently wrote a powerful book focusing on a different cause but the same solution.

Anna Lappe’s thought provoking book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It is clearly one of the most important books of the year. Her message is simple: “If we are serious about addressing climate change, we have to talk about food.”

Lappe confronts the major role industrial agriculture plays in the climate crisis. Her responsibly researched investigation into a broken food system proves that the global use of hazardous chemicals, biotech crops, concentrated animal feeding operations and processed foods is destroying the eco-system.

In this book, Lappe lays out 7 principles of a climate friendly diet in an attempt to make her pursuit for environmental reform OUR pursuit for environmental reform. Informative and inspiring, Lappe is convinced that eating a plant based diet will influence the marketplace in ways we cannot imagine in addition to helping in the quests to end world hunger and combat climate change.

Read about the causes of the food-climate connection and learn how you can be a part of the solution!