This past week, we spent a day at a co-living community near Montpelier. There we met Lisa, a food-as-medicine specialist, who walked us through some basics of cooking and eating that were, for most of us, new: rather than prioritizing the relatively recent discoveries of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals in food, this approach–based in much longer traditions–instructs eaters to form a diet based on close introspection of their body’s individual needs. This style of eating takes into account multiple heuristics: the taste profiles salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and spicy; seasonal characteristics of summer, late summer, fall, winter, and spring; and the “warming” or “cooling” properties of foods, herbs, and spices (for example, thyme is warming while tarragon is cooling–use them together for a balanced dish, or focus on one based on your body’s needs). We were given a many-page pamphlet filled with the qualities of various fruits, vegetables, and grains, which also sung the praises of soaking grains, fermenting foods, and minimizing consumption of animal products.
Overall, it started to feel kind of complicated.
But then maybe it isn’t. In talking with a friend afterward, it became clear that eating the way that Lisa described is not just simple but even compulsory if you are eating a (mainly) local and seasonal diet. Making buying decisions based on what is available seasonally thus helps us to (re-)align ourselves with some very ancient dietary traditions. And I realized: the kind of eating that Lisa was condoning only seems complicated when we are immersed in a food culture based on infinite decisions. Were I to go to a chain grocery, it would be stressful, to remember that cumin is warming while coriander is cooling. If I go to the local farmer’s market, however, those decisions become much more straightforward: the bitter greens available in the early summer are precisely what we should be eating at that time. The local diet, then, can help us better listen to our own bodies.
I know that not everyone has the fortune to be able to make their buying decisions at the farmer’s market, and–in keeping with Chuck Ross’ actual prompt for this week–I by no means intend to overlook the complexity of the system that allows some people that privilege while denying it of others (though I will happily quote his recommendation that “what we need is a new economic system”). However, it is reassuring to see that eating locally, instead of complicating questions of access, equity, fairness, and so on, for once simplifies something: our awareness of our own needs.