The Secret Ingredient: Seasonal, Local Food

Over at the LRC blog, Karen de Coster has an interesting post about “Ingredients,” a documentary on local food production as opposed to the industrial food model. As someone who lives in Topeka, where finding a non-franchise restaurant — how many times can you people eat at Chili’s already? — is like encountering Bigfoot and a leprechaun riding a giant unicorn, I am very interested in this topic.

She then makes an interesting point about French restaurants:

I especially like when the filmmaker goes to Carafe Bistro in Portland, Oregon and discusses why French cuisine is so superior and desired around the world: the French, unlike Americans, don’t work from year-round static menus and seek to obtain their food from any supplier that can sustain the menu. The French bring in local food, seasonally, and they adapt and create according to the chef’s inspiration based on the type of food that arrives daily. For a French chef, each day is a spontaneous and creative challenge.

As it turns out, this is one of the things we like so much about RowHouse, our favorite restaurant. The menu changes weekly, and is inspired in part by what ingredients are available that time of year.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=507332958 Philip Lynch

Yes good point.
Erik Carlseen

Tom, are you referring to the menus or the whole “locavore” thing? Personally, I love local restaurants with creative chefs that constantly change things up and create new and exciting menus. I’m happy that I live in an area that caters to this (pun semi-intended). On the other hand, the locavore movement is one of the most boneheaded neo-Luddite causes imaginable. When you get into hard numbers it succeeds on no level other than creating demand for otherwise undesirable / unmarketable food products. Fuel and energy consumption are considerably higher (often by orders of magnitude), as is land use, labor, etc. I mention this mainly because I was in a debate on the virtues of “locavore” behavior and someone jumped up and down and said “See?!?? Tom Woods agrees!”

Having spent many years working in the transportation industry where fuel costs are king, I can verify that the criticisms vis-a-vis transportation efficiencies are spot on. Moving stuff around from small production site to small retail / distribution site via relatively small trucks is absolutely no match for containerized freight moved by big rigs. When you factor in the use of ships and / or rail, the numbers just get silly. Even assuming all other things being equal you would still use considerably more fuel just driving a few extra blocks to get locally-grown food (and we’re talking really small blocks) than would be expended in the entire journey of an efficiently-grown and distributed, say, bag of oranges.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Right, my position is not that it’s inefficient or wrong to ship food across long distances, but that we forget the culinary virtues of local food.
Marcia Sullivan

We have just discovered Woodfire Grill in Atlanta…uses local, sustainable, organic foods in season. Their menu changes daily on some items/ weekly on some, seasonally on others…depending on what the farmers have to sell. It was absolutely an amazing night of eating…almost primal, too!
Rboling

As a local food producer who also works at a discount mega grocery store (no not Walmart)…. La La La La La I can’t hear you While I completely agree that if the local food movement somehow became the norm the world would starve. It does have it’s place and can (rarely I’m sure) be done with at least decent efficiency. For example I deliver my product on my way to my day job (the route goes right by our local food store) so my expense for that is essentially nil.
Brian

I drove the entire length of Kansas back in 1997. I don’t remember seeing much of anything, including Chili’s Restaurants.

I might have seen a leprechaun on a unicorn, but then again I might have been delirious from the fact that I was driving across Kansas.
jaffi411

There is a farmer’s market every saturday less than a mile from my apartment that I go to every spring/summer. Also, I like to ride my bike down to Cleveland’s Westside Market every weekend, as well. Last year I bought a quarter of grass-fed cow for less than $3 a pound, and I am always getting great deals on produce, marrow bones and organs. I usually like to go to these things during the last 45 minutes or so, that way I can really haggle with the dealers. Also, it is a lot easier to get things like duck eggs, duck fat, quail eggs, quail, lamb liver, chicken hearts/livers, beef tallow, marrow bones, neck bones, fish eggs, beef knuckles, etc when you buy from local farms and distributors. Obviously, it also makes your menu quite a bit more interesting and healthy– I rarely have the same meal more than 1-3 times a month.

While I don’t eat at restaurants, I still do go to the big chain stores (Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, etc) for a lot of standard stuff. However, for some things there really is no other way to get it, or get it at a great price, than to buy local and haggle your butt off.
Ivan

Tom,
In which sense the apples picked three weeks ago in your neighborhood are nutritionally “superior” to bananas picked two weeks ago and transported within two days from say Senegal? It’s not clear to me at all what would be the “virtues” of local as opposed to non-local food. If you prefer bananas to apples, the locally grown apples would not have any intrinsic “virtue” for you as compared to bananas, only because they are picked two blocks away from your home.

Also, what would your French chef do during December, January, February, March or April, when there is no seasonal local food, if he does not use the processed or conserved products (by definition), and also does not want to use the fresh, imported non-local stuff?

It seems that your assumption is that eating locally grown beef in Topeka, Kansas, is somehow inherently better, healthier and more delicious for a Topeka citizen than eating the see food or salmon imported from Japan or British Columbia. It well may be, but it does not have anything to do with geography, and whether something is “locally grown”, “seasonal” or not, but only with the nutritional qualities of a specific food.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Ivan, have you ever eaten tomatoes from your own garden?
http://economicharmonies.wordpress.com/ Joel Poindexter

There are actually health benefits to eating locally produced food. Honey for example, that is produced locally, is made from bees which pollinate local plants; this helps your immune system develop defenses against local pollen allergies.
jaffi411

All I saw when I went through Kansas was trees and a lot of dead armadillos. Same with Oklahoma and Missouri (near the Ozarks).
jaffi411

First of all, geography does play a part in the nutrition and taste of all foods due to the quality of the soil, the growing window and the amount of solar activity. This doesn’t only apply to the plants being grown, but also the animals that eat the plants, and the animals that eat the animals. It has been proven without a doubt that grass-fed beef is nutritionally superior to grain-fed (conventional) beef. There is no debating this issue in the least. However, it is also true that the quality of grass-fed beef is dependent upon the quality and nutrients found in the grasses eaten by the cow, which is almost entirely dependent upon geography. Remember, most fertilizers used only

I certainly would be willing to say that a grass-fed cow that is pastured in Topeka, Kansas will be more nutritionally dense and taste far better than a cow raised in Pheonix, Arizona (regardless of whether it is grass-fed or grain-fed).

I don’t think that it is Tom’s contention that ALL locally grown food is better or more nutritionally dense, only that some foods fit this profile. However, I think the more important aspect is the difference of processes used in producing foods. Most of your local producers are smaller operations, thus they don’t always use the same processes as large, conventional operations. Freshness is also a prime consideration in nutrition, because as soon as a plant is harvested, it is losing its nutritional density. Obviously, eating spinach that was picked that very same morning will be more nutritionally dense than spinach that was picked 1-2 weeks ago.

While taste is a very subjective matter, I challenge you to compare the taste of blueberries bought from a Walmart SuperCenter vs those bought at a local farmer’s market, and tell me that there isn’t a marked difference.

http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/chap3.html
jaffi411

The nutritional and immune benefits found in honey are only found in raw honey. However, most small, local vendors sell only raw honey, anyway. So, yeah…. LOL
Stonewall

+1. Fresher is better, certainly is better tasting, and while “local” does not necessarily equate to “fresher,” very often it does. My garden gets bigger every year.
Ivan

Yes, I grew up in a village in Serbia, and I have eaten tomatoes from my grandpa’s garden every Summer. It was very good most of the time. However, I can tell you that tomatoes I used to buy in “Metro” in Windsor, Ontario, was even better at times. And certainly the only difference between the delicious grapes from my grandpa’s vineyard and the imported grapes from Chile bought in December in Serbia was in the latter being very expensive.
http://twitter.com/carpenter_kenny ken carpenter

Chipotle would be an option. Easy to customize your “burrito bowl” without grains. Lots of fresh avocado and grass fed proteins, veggies. I would also vote for a In-n-Out’s “protein style burger, fresh (not frozen) 100% ground chuck, they are only in the south/southwest currently.. There are some exceptional fast foods that are fine in moderation.
kingofbacon andeggs

I agree with local, fresh foods. I take cooking classes at JWU in Providence (technically Cranston). I talk with the chefs who teach there and they a working and promoting an RI based initiative called Farm Fresh (www.farmfresh.org). Basically Farm Fresh work out deals with local farmers, ranchers, and fishermen to supply to restaurants. Effectively they are a broker so a chef has one stop shopping and one invoice.

Guess what!? The RI state government is intervening in the name of food safety. I’ve heard that all meat and seafood sales have been halted to “better” regulate the sales. Furthermore, all seafood has to be sent to the Boston area for redistribution. Fishermen are not allowed to sell their goods directly. As I understand, an exception is one can purchase fresh seafood off the boat only if they get it form the boat. Not to practical. I know many fishermen and the impact is huge. RI is so corrupt!

I personally think big vendors are losing business so the state stepped in.
Pastor KoRect

I have not been in that part of the world for ten years – but it I did not see any franchises at that time – only homes that used their kitchens as restaurants. Must have built up overnight.