Let The Weather Report Dictate What You Eat!

We don’t know if you’ve quite heard, but The Glow Paradise is on the brink of launching its 2021-2022 Winter Menu. This season’s dishes will be jam-packed with all kinds of nutritious seasonal superfoods that are guaranteed to satisfy your cravings while keeping you balanced and splendidly nourished.

So eating seasonally is in and of itself a practice that we are 100% on board with. In the long-lived practice of Ayurveda, there is a specific word for eating with the seasons and it’s Ritucharya. The concept is pretty self-explanatory: you change your diet in response to change in climatic conditions. This practice is said to help in maintaining health and preventing disease, and it applies to wherever you live no matter the seasonal foods specific to your region on the planet.

In our opinion, it is a simple and outstanding food philosophy at its core. If you think about it, once upon a time eating seasonally was the norm whether people liked it or not. In fact, humans were in tune with nature, living off of the land and making use of the bounty of each changing season. There were absolutely no tomatoes in winter!

Here is our take on why eating seasonally is better both for you and the planet:

Seasonal eating mostly means local eating, and that might seem too obvious but after all, the whole point is to reduce your carbon footprint by lowering the demand for out of season foods that need to be shipped in long-distance. Think about it: year-round supply of fresh produce is made possible through the use of new technologies which extend natural production and growing season, as well as international trade. How far did those raspberries that you bought at the grocery store travel to get on those shelves, and in the middle of January no less?

It’s also important to note that foods grown and consumed during their appropriate seasons are more nutritionally dense. When produce is grown out of season, it is unable to follow its natural growing and ripening patterns. So to fight that, artificial ripening agents are used after harvesting and they include chemicals, gases and heat processes. These processes enable large agricultural corporations to mass-produce by slowing down the food’s maturation. And while this does ensure that consumer demands are met all year-round, research after research and found and proven that artificially ripened produce is neither as nutritious or tasty as naturally ripened food.

Have you ever had a garden grown tomato and realized that it tastes so much sweeter than the ones you buy at the supermarket? That’s because unfortunately in this day and age, quantity, appearance and shelf life trumps quality and taste any day. Don’t believe us? Take a trip to the farmers market and taste the produce sold there for comparison.

Your local farmers market is the ideal place to shop for fresh seasonal produce, and that is because it is often harvested within the last 24 hours in its peak season. It also helps support the local farmers who put love and passion into growing the food that you are eating, so don’t be afraid to chat with these lovely folks and make sure they know that you are appreciative of their hard work and effort!

Finally dear readers, we leave you with all the fruits and veggies that are in season right around this time of year (fall/winter), so you know what to buy, when to buy it, and what you will be finding more of on The Glow Paradise’s brand new winter menu:

Apples, beets, bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, pumpkin, cabbage, leeks, oranges, Swiss chard and turnips. Happy seasonal shopping!