The modern world, allows us to buy food with ease, in quantities and varieties that nature can’t provide even in the most bountiful regions. Thanks to the globalization of commerce, some of us find ourselves lucky enough to be able to buy mangos at a store in Portland even when they’re shipped from a farm in Poza Rica, Mexico, this is true with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and spices.
When I was becoming interested in a Paleo lifestyle it occurred to me how difficult it is for some people to get certain foods, particularly for those living in rural communities, who are removed from the modern cities, and yet, some of them, eat healthier than we do. While some of us in major cities have a treasure trove of foods available to us and yet we chronically eat out of season or eat foods that are more expensive and less nutritious due to their long and costly traveling.
The fact is that no matter where we live we can all achieve a healthy lifestyle if we shop smart.
Common Mistakes in Shopping for Modern Paleoliths:
1: BUYING FOOD OUT OF SEASON
It is not easy for people who are accustomed to finding everything in their supermarkets year-round to know when things are in season. But fruit and vegetables out of season are always a disappointment. A good rule of thumb is if it is not growing locally right then, it is probably out of season.
For example: a person trying to make up a recipe that calls for ripe tomatoes goes to their local store in January buys 4 large red tomatoes and makes the recipe.
The result should be obvious for anyone who has ever had the pleasure of eating a fresh ripe tomato. Yes the food gets made, and it even includes the needed ingredients, but the “large red tomatoes” are either shipped from somewhere an ocean away and kept in cold storage for weeks or they have modified (I’ll leave mad science rants for another post). In both cases the tomatoes are wood and the texture is wrong. They are tomatoes in name only. Now the kids say they don’t like tomatoes and you are out 8 bucks.
But how exactly do you tell when something is in season?
Looking at the prices is a good way to start. If you notice that suddenly red bell peppers went from being $2.50 a piece to 3 pieces for $5 and then 10 peppers for $10, it is a good sign that they are getting in season. Eating in season certainly takes time to figure out which things are or not in season, but it is well worth the effort.
Last year went great, but this year there is not as many options!
Eating in season means depending on the weather conditions to determine if it will be a good year for certain fruits or vegetables. Unfortunately, where I live, this year Farmers Markets aren’t doing very well. The cold wet spring and summer (coldest and wettest on record) have played havoc on local farms. Traditionally this would be where a paleolithic hunter/gatherer would have gotten the hell out of Dodge, thank you Epipaleolithic age!!!
2: BUY FOOD THAT IS NOT LOCAL
Not counting the notable exception of terrible harvests; a big goal for paleo is to eat as local as possible. This can be taken to all sorts of extreme but is usually reasonable to try to stay within a 50 to 100 mile radius of where you live. I am NOT saying that if you live in Seattle you can’t ever eat a papaya (a family favorite when we can get one) but be aware of the time and distance involved with your day-to-day shopping. Not just your direct travel to the store, but where did all that food come from. If you live in Montana switch out bananas for a berry mix or if you live in Omaha skip the Salmon and get a steak. Getting seafood where there is no sea will be by all means more expensive and not fresh. We already knew this, right?
The same thing applies for any kind of meat, fruit or vegetable and yes! we keep going to the supermarket to get things we can’t grow because they are accessible and we have the money to pay for them.
If it’s not local and you want to eat it, guten Appetit! I wish I had that much money to buy different styles of meat everyday, but I don’t, and that’s why I have to try my best to shop locally and try to take advantage of canning certain foods during the summer, to have plenty of choices during the winter when food is most scarce.
LEARN TO ADAPT.
Questions such as: what am I going to eat?, what kind of food do I need to eat? and where can I get it? are some of the critical questions we need to ask ourselves when shopping and embracing a new lifestyle. If you can go outside and grow it, catch it, or pick it then eat it. Since I have started this website I have heard again and again how hard it is to eat Paleo, how expensive. its true! surrounded be so many things that we are told not to eat it is easy to get hung up on what a DIET this is. It is easy to over look the amazing food that we CHOOSE to eat and with a little creativity you can literary feast like no other time in human history and be better off for it. If early paleo men and women could walk around putting funny looking plants in their mouths hopping it didn’t kill them I am sure you and I can figure out a way to enjoy our cabbage and apples without too much strain.
VIEW THIS ARTICLE IN SPANISH
Editors Update:
Robb here, I’ve had a remarkable number of people…well, whining about the inaccessibility of foods during the winter due to say, far northerly locations. This blog post is meant as a guide, NOT doctrine. Put on your thinking cap and think through the problem. If you live near the arctic circle, should you pick watermelon in winter or perhaps protein veggies and fat. The inuit ate protein & fat…you can go to the grocery store and add some veggies. No over-thinking necessary ;0)
GREAT post Chelo! A useful app that I have is the Locavore app (also available for Android phones). Super easy to use, shows you what’s local and in-season in your area. You can also change locations so when you’re in another part of the country, you can see what is in season and local there. Pretty cool little app!
http://www.getlocavore.com/
That sound super convenient, I have to check it out! Thanks P.S. Love your cookbook, awesome work!
Aw, thanks Chelo! We’re very excited about it!
What should I eat in February in New Hampshire?
For instance you have google to do some research.. some have already said epicurious is a great tool http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/seasonalcooking/farmtotable/seasonalingredientmap
You can also take a look at http://www.pickyourown.org/NHharvestcalendar.htm . Will give you a general idea what to buy in NH and also at the local supermarkets and what you shouldn’t. Good luck!
This is what Epicurious says for NH, December through April: The growing season is dormant. Opt for items from storage.
You didn’t harp on or overstate the ease of finding food in major cities, but I still want to point out that while I live in the largest city in the U.S., healthy shopping is still highly inconvenient for me.
I do not live in a food desert, but what is actually a pretty nice working/middle class neighborhood that’s downright suburbanish in spots. Yet there’s no good supermarket. There’s a place that calls itself a supermarket but is a large convenience store and there’s a small supermarket with a very limited selection of mediocre-quality fresh foods. I can travel by subway to very nice natural foods stores that have all I want, but I don’t have a car. This means I can:
1) Go very frequently and only buy in small quantities that I can carry home on the subway.
2) Go less frequently, haul a large amount of food down the stairs to the subway, then up the stairs from the subway, then up the three flights of stairs to my apartment.
Were I just an all around better person, I would take the time and put in the effort to do one of the above. But I’m not that good and the effect if I tried to be that good would be to not have nutritious Paleo foods around the house when I’m hungry and running down the street to a bodega to buy crap that’s convenient. My solution is to pay a premium and a delivery fee to have a grocery service bring my groceries once per week. Which I fully understand is a highly privileged solution to a fairly privileged problem. I’m not rich and I go without other things in order to have semi-convenient access to nutritious foods, but the fact remains that someone with motivation, desire and resources has no convenient access to nutritious food IN THE LARGEST CITY IN THE UNITED STATES.
I apologize for using your blog to vent about that fact, but it’s not right. Eating nutritious, wholesome food should not be difficult and until the current situation changes, Americans with fewer motivation and means to eat nutritiously aren’t going to and will suffer poor health as a result.
I buy premium canned tomatoes (Muir Glen Roasted usually) about 10 months out of the year and they’re fantastic.
One handy tool that I found is on Epicurious. You click on the month, then click on your state and it gives you a small list of what’s in season in your state.
http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/seasonalcooking/farmtotable/seasonalingredientmap
Good article, but it does not address the issues of eating locally and in season when you live in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), or even further north… ideas? (and, no… seals, whales and caribou are not local… LOL!)
I buy local as much as I can but don’t stress about it like I used to. I figure that a tomato from Mexico is healthier than non paleo food that’s made in my hometown.
In theory I’d love to eat seasonally and locally, in practice its not feasible to rely completely on these rules.
No fresh fruits or vegetables available in Toronto, Canada in February. Also we’d never be able to eat fish or seafood since its not local, and we’d never eat anything that was caught in Lake Ontario.
Lynn-
these are guides to inform choices, not religious doctrine. In you instance would wintertime meal options be better built from tropical fruits, or animal fats & greens? This is the concept that is important to get.
What are the acceptable paleo alternatives when it’s 10 degrees and nothings growing that time of the year? I’d think eating the shipped in veggies has got to be acceptable…
Pleas see one of my other comments on this.
I’m with Barb, the only local food here is Wheat and Canola and only for a couple months of the year.
What about frozen vegetables? I’ve heard that they’re typically “flash frozen” at their peak, no matter where they’re located. Plus, you can get broccoli, kale, spinach, carrots, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, mustard greens, etc. etc. ALL for under 2 bucks a pound…
Im loving that this is in Spanish! I can send it to my dad who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia as well (I got diagnosed 10 yrs ago he got diagnosed a few months back) and I keep telling him how friggin awesome Paleo is and also why buying and eating local grown things is so much better but there is little I have found for him to read up on in Spanish, so this is awesome!
totally random question how do I get my fancy icon to show?
Keep up the great work Chelo 🙂
Brissia, thank you very much for your really nice comment. You should tell your Dad to buy Robb’s book in Spanish, is on sale now through amazon.com, just type La Solucion Paleolitica, and if he ever needs some help in Spanish don’t hesitate on visiting my blog and send me an email : )
To display your icon you need to open an account in http://en.gravatar.com/
Have a great one!
A mi papa le encanto tu pagina (y por lo regular odia la internet1) muchisimas gracias!
de nada Brissia! que bueno que le haya gustado.. pronto subire mas articulos y recetas!!! : DDD
I had to comment on the protectionist language at the end of the posted video. I have been paleo for about a year now and have always found that it goes well with my other passion, libertarian philosophy. It seems that from an evolutionary prospective it is our ability to trade with greater and greater portions of the world that has led to our long term sustainability as a species. If there is drought in Mexico I’ll buy from South America. Yet it seems in many Paleo Posts I find myself let down by the lack of creativity when it comes to economic issues. If you want to buy locally because it is easier to find things in season or because it is more healthy, than great!, but if you believe that buying locally has some beneficial environmental or economic impact on your community I am sorry to inform you that you are most likely mistaken. I eat Paleo because it provides me the health to enjoy the freedom that life is begging me to explore.
I have a question that might be totally random. In some cookbooks I’ve seen the sweet potato highlighted in so many recipes. Others I’ve read that it’s to be avoided based off the “can’t be eaten raw”. Where does the sweet potato rank? Should it be avoided or is it acceptable for consumption???
v/r
New to Paleo and already feeling great
“Immortals…I will test this theory”
What is the thought on egg beaters?? I’m just wondering if Egg Beaters can be used in place of normal eggs. Sometimes with the way I travel…It’s easier to just pack a egg beater. Place it in my cooler and then once I’ve arrived my location. Grab a skillet and whip it up.
Not so much Curt. Look for real liquid eggs or beat some yourself and put them in a jar. Hard boiled is another great option.
Thanks Amy will do. Please forgive me as I find myself sometimes trying to “hold on” to certain things I like (egg beaters being one). I guess it’s the “awweeee do I have to”. Some things I’m learning is just proper preperation….i.e. Boil up a couple of eggs and viola no excuse. So thank you again Amy. Hopefully, I don’t wear out my welcome with questions and “Can I’s”. Does it help if I say I’m reading the Fuel as Rx blog??? 🙂
I must say I love the what’s in season, and shop within 50-100 miles of where you live. It made me do research and to my suprise. I found a local farm and butcher shop. Guess what??? I was like a kid in the candy story. In the beginning I thought the prices were high, but when I compared actual per product amount. It came out cheaper annnddddddd the taste was like care bears singing in my mouth. In about 5 minutes I had consumed 5 peaches, 7 plums, and countless apples. I couldn’t get enough…the fruit just seem to be made of sunshine and a spring breeze. Okay, just had to share my happiness in my discovery.
They have a pack of cinnamon rolls in my shop right now. I am writing to resist the urge to “grab one”. *Slapping hand back from grabbing one*
I figured it was easier to come on here. Admit my weakness and help myself stay accountable.
0_o*****
That’s a tough one! hang in there.