Seasonal Food and Nutrition

Enrich’s chosen theme for June is Appreciate. We all have so much goodness in our lives, and practising gratitude is one of the best ways to increase our overall wellbeing. We can become very focused on what we would like to change or the goals that we are working towards, but this month we would like to encourage you to stop and take stock of the things that are going right. This can take many forms, such as keeping a gratitude journal or taking time to really notice the beauty of your surroundings. Whichever method you choose, there is no doubt that cultivating more gratitude in our lives can help to increase our overall sense of wellbeing.

One way that we can bring this sense of appreciation into our everyday lives is to choose to eat in a more seasonal way. This term gets used a lot, but put simply it means focusing on selecting foods, particularly fruits and vegetables, that naturally grow at the time of year that you are in. Eating foods that are harvested at the peak of their growing cycle means you are maximising freshness and taste, eating foods when they are at their absolute best. It also is one of the best ways to support the environment and be more sustainable.

Seasonal foods:

-  Will help to reduce your environmental impact. A lot of energy is used in the process of bringing fruits and vegetables hundreds of miles to the supermarket shelves, and often more packaging is needed. Food that is produced within your local area has much less distance to travel.

-  Tastes better. Local seasonal produce is more likely to be ripened on the farm where it is grown, as opposed to ripening in transit. This means that it gets the maximum amount of time to naturally develop flavour, so it is at its best when you eat it.

-  Helps to support local communities. When you choose seasonal, local foods, that money is going to support Irish farmers and businesses.

-  Are easier to trace. The global food supply system is vast and complex, so the less steps to get the food from farm to your table, the better.

-  Help to reduce food waste. Foods that spend a lot of time in transit in the supply chain have much higher chances of spoiling along the way. Getting your food at its peak of freshness means it will last longer for you.

-  Can save you money. Foods in season are more abundant, so you can often buy them for lower costs than when they need to be shipped out of season. You also are getting the best quality for the price at this time.

While foods in season are certainly at their best taste-wise, there is not a lot of evidence that they are better for you in terms of their nutrients. Seasonality does not significantly affect the nutrients found in food. However, you can choose foods that best support your wellbeing, in tune with the seasons and your changing needs. During the warmer summer months, when the choice of fresh fruit abounds, why not use some seasonal berries to create a refreshing hydrating lemonade? Or when the colder months are here, we can nourish ourselves with warming, satisfying vegetable stews that warm us from the inside out.

Check out our recipe this month for some inspiration to start cooking more seasonally and appreciating the abundance of the produce that is on offer at this time of year!