By: Cheryl Molinatto, 2011 IFIC Sylvia Rowe Fellow & MPH-RD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Absolutely, local and processed foods can fit together for a healthful diet!  Opening my lunch box is a testament to that fact.  Here’s a picture of one day’s lunch: sliced cucumbers and peppers, crackers, hummus, leftover fruit salad, a baggie of nuts and a granola bar.  The cucumber and pepper are from a local farm where I have a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share.  My husband made the hummus.  The fruit salad came about after I picked up pineapple and nectarines from the grocery store to go with the cantaloupe from a farmers’ market that was in my fridge.  I cut up the fruit to bring to a potluck and fortunately for me, had some leftovers for my lunch.  The crackers, nuts and granola bar helped to round out this nutritious meal. 

With all of the rhetoric today surrounding food and food production, it can be difficult to decide what food to eat and where to buy it.  I’ll be the first to say that I appreciate that I can get food from both a local farm and a grocery store.  While there is no official definition of a “local” food, for me it means that I can have a direct connection with a farmer to learn more about how my food is produced along with being able to support the local economy.  Now, local food isn’t necessarily organic, as commonly believed, but local is an indicator of how far from the purchase location the food is grown.  Local can be organic, conventional, or biotech
.
I get local food from a “u-pick” farm because I love being able to get my hands dirty picking apples or spinach, for example.  I already mentioned my CSA where I get 27 weeks of fresh produce and have been able to try foods I’d never heard of – like kohlrabi – and made newfound loves of Swiss chard and okra.  Another local food source I frequent are farmers’ markets which have exploded recently – there are over 7,000 across the US – and they’re another way to get fruit, vegetables, dairy and meat direct from farmers. 

But, how can local and processed foods coexist?  First, let’s get straight what processed foods are.  The 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report defines a processed food as an agricultural commodity that has undergone, “washing, cleaning, milling, cutting, chopping, heating, pasteurizing, blanching, cooking, canning, freezing, drying, dehydrating, mixing, packaging, or other procedures that alter the food from its natural state.”  That means that the much of the food that is sold at a local farmers’ market has technically been processed by being washed or packaged.  My family also processes food at home when we make hummus, but the ingredients themselves have already been processed to a degree before they reach my kitchen.  And foods more traditionally thought of as processed foods like granola bars, crackers and the occasional frozen meal help me have a healthful lunch much less expensively than eating out.  So, as you can see, I rely on both processed and locally-produced foods to eat three nutritious meals (plus a few snacks) every day.