Sustainable eating is possible: this is how we do it!
We love food. We love to cook; we love to eat and we especially love serving up delicious meals for our guests at the farm-to-table restaurant that is part of our bed and breakfast. Not only do we want to serve (and eat) delicious, healthy food. We also want it to be sustainable—and that means minimizing waste, being mindful of seasonality and buying locally grown produce whenever possible. But how do you do this if you live in an area where the supermarket is filled with imported foods? How does one go about choosing which vegetables in the store are grown locally or organically? And what about meat and dairy choices? Let's take a look at some ways we make eating sustainably possible while still enjoying great food!
Keep it Seasonal
When it comes to eating sustainably, there's no arguing that seasonal food is the best option. That's because seasonally produced foods are grown in the season when it is easiest and most efficient for them to grow. This increases their nutritional value, since food harvested during its prime ripening period contains a higher concentration of vitamins and minerals. Seasonal food - especially fruit and vegetables - also tends to be more affordable than imported fruits or vegetables out of season—and you won't have to sacrifice taste either! When produce is at its peak, it tastes better because there is less time between harvest and consumption.
Buy Local
We are lucky, we know. We are located in Salento, Apulia, Italy: a region blessed with great climate and biodiversity.
Our restaurant is farm-to-table—meaning that we source our ingredients directly from our own land or from local producers. This helps keep everything as fresh as possible, which means you get to taste all the freshness!
We grow most of our own produce
We have a lot of land around our B&B, and we are able to grow vegetables, herbs, fruit trees and even forage for wild vegetables like asparagus!
We buy organic, local, and seasonal food from local producers we know personally.
Buying food from local producers is one of the easiest ways to be sustainable. When you buy local, you support the community and reduce travel costs for your groceries. Buying seasonal and organic also helps with this as well, because it's more likely that produce will be grown closer to home.
When it comes to buying from a farmer, there are a few things you should look for:
They need to be passionate about their farming.
They should be professionals with the appropriate certifications, meaning their products meet the required safety and quality standards.
They should not have an endless supply of anything. Endless supplies are incompatible with respecting natural cycles and giving resources the time to replenish themselves. A local, organic farmer's offer is and should be limited.
They should use natural pesticides if they do use them at all.
We strive to understand our ecosystem and eat accordingly
We understand our ecosystem better since we started running our own sustainable farm-to-table restaurant, and we also eat accordingly. Our understanding of seasonality has grown, and we’re now passionate about using food that is in season. We also know how to preserve food as well as cook with what we have preserved. This goes hand in hand with ancient local knowledge: traditional recipes, after all, were meant for a time when there were no supermarkets in which to buy exotic food nor fridges to store it in. Instead of buying expensive processed foods at the grocery store, we make our own staples from scratch using our own ingredients for maximum nutrition value or buy from local farmers that we have known for years.
Eating in a way that is good for you and our planet is possible!
It may sound like a tall order, but sustainable eating doesn’t have to be expensive or even hard. Here are some tips from us at The Aia to help you eat sustainably:
Buy local. If it comes from across the ocean, it might not be as fresh or healthy as foods grown right here in your neighbourhood. And if we all buy locally produced food that has been grown without pesticides and other chemicals, then we won’t have as much waste due to spoilage. Generally speaking, the less your food has travelled to reach you, the more sustainable it is. Anything that needs to be loaded onto a plane in order to land on your table can't really be called sustainable. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's bad for you, nor is it wrong for you to eat it, but you should be aware of the CO2 footprint that food can generate when it is transported over long distances.
Eat produce when it comes into season (and freeze surplus). Seasonal produce tends to taste better than out-of-season varieties anyway! If you happen to find it on offer or if your local farmers offer large quantities, bulk buy, and freeze the surplus. Pro tip: wash, peel and chop your veggies before freezing, that way you will practically have ready-to-go vegetable soup for those lazy winter nights when you don't feel like cooking. Just thaw it and boil it with your favourite seasoning and it will always taste fresh and delicious!
We promote the same philosophy in our guests
Our guest's health is important to us.
We promote the same philosophy in our guests. Our goal is to create a space where people can come together and be excited about eating. We want to help you make sustainable food choices that are easy and taste like heaven.
We like to think of ourselves as the friendly face of sustainable eating. We want to give you the knowledge and confidence that you need to make sustainable food choices. Our goal is not just to help you understand what sustainable eating all is about, but also how to incorporate it into your daily life.
Sustainable eating is not only possible, it's actually really delicious!
The first thing that people think when they hear "sustainable" and "eating" in the same sentence is that it's going to be bland, boring, and tasteless. This couldn't be further from the truth. The trick with sustainable eating is knowing how ingredients come together with the minimum possible effort and how they naturally pair with each other. In general, reducing the amount of processed foods you consume will improve your overall health and make sure that your diet remains sustainable in both the short-term and long-run.
Sustainable eating doesn't mean sacrificing quality either! Eating sustainably means making sure that whatever food you purchase is locally grown/raised as much as possible so that no unnecessary resources are used to transport them across great distances just so someone else can profit off their sales instead.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you understand how to eat sustainably. There are many ways to eat a more sustainable diet, and we encourage you to use our tips as inspiration for making your own changes!