Yours Truly and Spaghetti Squash

Just about everything that we do has an impact on the environment.  But most of us don’t realize how much of an impact buying food can have on the earth.  Each trip to the grocery store, you can end up with a grocery cart that isn’t so much a selection of healthy foods as a tour across two or three continents.  Tomatoes from Florida are frequently harvested using slave labor, apples make their way from coast to coast and back again, and corn syrup finds its way into everything.

Large companies use deceptive advertising and artificial ripening techniques to make our produce appear local, organic, or ripe when it is not.  They use images of small farms on meats processed from animals that never saw the sun.  A grocery trip can represent an incredibly huge carbon footprint, human rights violations, and all sorts of health risks.  But there is a way to ensure that our foods are free of all those things.

Do your grocery shopping at a local farmers market.  Contrary to popular belief, the prices at a farmers market are very much comparable to a grocery store, and in some states farmers markets even accept WIC and food stamps.  You might not be able to buy your favorite brand of cereal or frozen dinner there, but at large farmers markets you can usually find homemade granola and pastas.

Farmers markets cut down the amount of fossil fuels wasted to get your food from the farm to your home, and the meat and produce you get there is going to be fresher, tastier, and more nutritious than the options at your local grocery chain.