Listen to the podcast.

Healthy Eating, One Hundred Mile Radius

Here’s a creative way to help reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming: Eat locally grown food!

When you eat foods that come from local farms, you are contributing to the local economy; reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to get the food from farm to plate; and enjoying the benefit of foods that haven’t spent a week in transit losing nutrients and freshness.

The trend to eat local, encouraged by a group that coined the phrased “locavores,” has inspired some to challenge themselves to see how much of their diet can be devoted to foods grown within a 100-mile radius. Many grocery stores have responded by featuring locally grown foods and farmers markets are enjoying a resurgence.

But be careful, if you also care about eating organic: “Grown locally” does not necessarily mean grown without chemicals. While many small, local farms do grow organic foods, many don’t, and if the food isn’t labeled “organic” you should ask. There are now federal standards in place for organically grown foods and most organic products are labeled as such.

It’s also still important to eat a balanced and varied diet, especially for still-growing children. So be careful not to limit yourself to what’s local at the expense of what your body needs to stay healthy.

For more information on the benefits of eating locally grown food, visit http://www.worldwatch.org/node/3938.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org