Food Miles and their Effect

Food miles are an interesting development of cheap air and sea travel, gone is the day when wearing your attractive loincloth you would wander up to the nearest tree, pluck an apple and eat it as fresh and as vibrant as it could be.

Now our food takes a longer journey from tree or earth to plate, I feel its important to realise that living foods are firstly vital and secondly losing their power to give health benefits from the moment they are picked. In some cases out of season foods are delivered frozen by sea freight or rushed over by air so we can enjoy a wider range of choice throughout the year. We are based in the UK so we enjoy bananas from the equator, apples from South Africa and Kiwi fruits from New Zealand. Although very enticing, what are these foods losing on the way?

This is what we think, we know fresh fruit and vegetables are good for us because of the healing power of the nutrients within, some nutrients are known about, the vitamins and minerals, some micro nutrients are yet to be discovered and their full benefits charted. But you can bet one thing! These nutrients are FRAGILE and they are live. Therefore common sense would indicate that foods are best eaten as fresh as possible and, importantly, unfrozen, un-processed and not heat treated unless necessary! Isn’t it striking that we are the only species on the planet with a catalogue of illness and we’re also the only one that cooks and stores food.

What can you do? We recommend tracking down your local farmers market, often good here are very reasonably priced and direct from farmer to you with minimal time and process between. Brilliant! Also shop for locally grown produce as a matter of habit, this will ensure the freshest of produce.

We also recommend enjoying the art of juice and smoothie making as this takes uncooked fresh fruit and vegetables extracts the goodness raw and uncooked and supplies your body with the nutrients it needs!