Eating Local

Climate change is a very large problem that affects people and animals around the world. Keeping up with your ecological footprint, and looking at it as a way to further your own health while also furthering the health of the environment not only around you, but also around the world is very important. One somewhat easy change that is mutually beneficial is changing your diet from processes goods to local goods.

Consuming local food is very important for different reasons. The first reason eating local instead of process goods is it is healthier for you. Although it might cost more and be harder to find local grown crops and meat is a lot healthier to consume. Processed food has hormones and chemicals that help it last long enough to get to your table. This has been proven to influence human health. Not only are you getting weeks and sometimes month old food, you truly never know what is in your food or who has touched it. The perk of eating local farm raised meet or local farms is that you know where it comes from. Your food isn’t just cleaner but taste better since you are eating it sometimes within days since it has been harvested. I want to start eating only local foods to better my health and the environment.

Another reason that eating local farm raised food is a positive thing is that it helps support local businesses. This is very important economically; I believe that it is really important to support your local businesses because they use less preservative and usually take better care of their animals and the environment they produce their crops in. It also is good for the environment due to the fact that they don’t have to ship out there goods, resulting in less carbon monoxide going into the Ozone.

The final and most important reason is that it will help lower your ecological footprint. Stopping the use of large farms and leaning towards local farms helps lower many major problems that human induce. It would lower the amount of pollutants due to pesticides and other harmful chemicals large-scale farms use.

After eating more clean for the past week I have realized many things. I realized that I am not accumulating as much trash as I have previously. I feel better due to less hormones and chemicals entering my body and I feel like I have actually helped make a small step towards lowering my neglect of the earth. Some challenges I faced are that it is hard to find affordable local food. The prices are higher but I believe it is worth a few dollars here and there. Another challenge is that it takes up more time, so I can see why people don’t do the switch over to local foods, but I believe it is really important. I believe that if everyone did this, the world would be in a better place, not only usage wise but also economically, which appeals to most people.

3 thoughts on “Eating Local

  1. I loved reading this especially since Brian Wheat came to speak from Low Country Local. I was wondering where you were planning on sourcing locally? Farmer’s market or maybe a CSA? I would be really interested to see what works better for students needs and is a cheaper option. I’m also really curious about the economic aspect for the farmers and State by sourcing locally. Since Farmers can basically control price at their discretion I wonder if they can actually make local food cheaper. Im not sure if my logic is correct but might make for good competition for our of state sourced agriculture. Upon further research I came across this awesome initiative called GrowFood Carolina that provides some thoughtful insight into sustaining local agriculture that you might be interested in. http://coastalconservationleague.org/projects/growfood/

  2. Thanks for this post, Austin, and kudos to switching to eating cleaner and more local! I especially loved how you described your personal experience with this. I`m also curious as to where you go for your local options.

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