Make eating local a priority
As the days grow shorter and colder, and our gardens and the fall harvest become a thing of the past, eating local can be more of a challenge. Thankfully, there are resources available to help make the feat – and feast – easier.
Last weekend, Pathways to Wellness hosted a Farm to Table Happy Hour event at the Pittsburgh Public Market in the Strip District. On hand were a variety of local businesses with a like-minded goal – to provide us with as many local ingredients as possible, some with outside the (CSA) box ideas.
Take the Upper St. Clair-based Fresh Fix. It’s a new company that delivers meal kits, complete with recipes and all of the ingredients for a home cooked meal. And, they source local ingredients. So, no matter how busy you may be, it’s possible to eat local.
Butler County’s 1st Generation Farms delivers fresh meats – grass-fed, non-GMO and pasture-based – as part of a CSA share.
A few vendors at the Happy Hour showcased just how easy it is to drink local – East End Brewing Co. and the Hermitage-based Webb Winery were also on hand.
There are a number of resources to guide you in eating local, including Farm to Table Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania Buy Fresh Buy Local program, a division of Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture.
The benefits of eating local are multi-fold. First, you are eating fresh and real foods – not processed food products. The money you spend on local produce, dairy and meats goes to your local farmer, not a huge corporation across the country. Furthermore, you are reducing your carbon footprint, because the food isn’t traveling thousands of miles to get to you.
On top of it all, you can actually speak and get to know the person who is growing and producing what you eat. What’s better for you than that?