Why I Started Paying Attention to Where My Food Comes From

One of the subjects that completely fascinated me while doing my Integrative Nutrition certification a few years ago was the idea of eating locally.

Before then, I thought I understood the benefits. You're supporting local farmers and the local economy, and your food hasn't traveled halfway around the world. All good reasons.

What I hadn't really thought about was what happens to our food between the farm and our plate.

Fruits and vegetables don't stop changing the moment they're picked. Time, temperature, storage and handling can affect their nutritional quality, and certain nutrients, particularly vitamin C, can decline during storage.

That was the part that blew my mind.

Think about the journey of something imported. It's harvested, packed, transported, stored, shipped or flown to another country, distributed to a supermarket and may sit there for several more days before we buy it. Then it probably spends some time in our fridge.

That doesn't mean imported produce isn't nutritious. Of course it is. But the shorter the journey from farm to plate, the greater the opportunity to eat produce while it's really fresh.

And freshness matters.

Science doesn't say that everything labeled "local" is automatically more nutritious. How something is grown, when it's picked, how it's stored and how quickly it's eaten all play a role. But research does show that post-harvest storage can affect levels of certain nutrients.

For me, the lesson was simple: fresh matters more than I realized.

It's also one of the reasons I love farmers' markets when I travel. If there's one nearby, I want to go.

Yes, they're lovely to wander around, but they're also one of my favorite ways to experience a destination. I want to see what's growing locally, what's in season and what everyone is buying. I want the tomatoes that actually smell like tomatoes and the fruit that's so ripe you want to eat it immediately.

And I always encourage eating there too. Buy the fruit. Try what's in season. If there are stalls preparing food using local ingredients, even better. You get to taste a place through what is actually growing there at that time.

We've become so accustomed to supermarkets giving us almost everything year-round that it's easy to forget food has seasons.

None of this means I've stopped buying imported produce. Living in Bahrain, that would be completely unrealistic. And eating fruits and vegetables, wherever they're grown, is far better than avoiding them because they aren't local.

What my certification changed was my awareness.

Now, when I have a choice between something grown locally and beautifully fresh and something that's traveled thousands of kilometers to reach me, I'll choose local.

And when I'm traveling, find me the farmers' market.

I'll probably be eating the fruit before I've even made it back to the hotel.