ColumnWinter is gone and spring season is here. Finally. 

Spring, I waited for you so long.

You’re like a long lost friend who has finally come to visit, taking their time to get here, but when you finally arrive, the memory of waiting so quickly disappears.

The waiting for you was hard. At times it was dark and difficult. I felt like I was suffocating underneath a pile of root vegetables. As if a partner had taken off and left me to pick up the pieces of a broken heart. It rained and rained and I thought it would never end. I just couldn’t eat another turnip.

You’re here now, with your radishes and ramps, your arugula and asparagus. Color has come back onto my plate. It seeps into my veins, brightening my every move. I feel lighter, wilder, more alive.

I waited so long. I deserve you, and I welcome you back with open arms.

The Saturday market now explodes with life. No wonder they call it spring fever. I feel invigorated, almost like I’ve had one too many cups of coffee. This time of year is regenerating, it gives your energy back. The sun comes out and I want to sing at the top of my lungs. I want to plunge my hands into the dirt. I want to eat every radish in sight, stick my nose deep into a bundle of fresh herbs and inhale the season.

The mint and kale are coming back in the pots hanging off the window ledge, a reminder that life does return, even without any intervention.

Things feel new again, potential hangs in the air. I want to turn every green item in sight into pesto. I dream of rhubarb. I count down the days until tomato season.

Just a few months ago the future was dismal and dreary, and now the light is shining bright at the end of the tunnel. There aren’t many steps to get there. At night I dream of being barefoot in a garden. Late night dinners at dusk, when the air is still balmy.

We’re not quite there yet, but here in the midst of spring season, the ground has thawed and plants have come back to life. The change is gradual at first, only a glimpse of what’s to come, and soon it’s a full-blown onslaught of vegetables and fruits. All these new things ready to be cooked and eaten. Spring food is simply glorious.

Spring, you are full of potential, full of life. If I could bottle you up, I would.

Instead, I’ll just pop you in a frying pan with a little olive oil and garlic. A taste of spring on my plate.

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Mike Licht

The post An Ode to the Spring Season: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnAre the “healthiest foods” always what’s best for us?

Chances are, when you see an article with “healthiest foods” mentioned in the title, you click on it. You clicked on this one, now didn’t you? And if you’re not on the internet, I’m sure a magazine or newspaper article promising to tell you all about the healthiest foods out there would sound enticing enough to read. In a world where we are trying to eat better, this is perfectly normal behavior.

When we focus on the “healthiest foods,” often we’re most focused on nutrients. How many vitamins, minerals, calories and cholesterol we get per serving. Recently I saw a healthiest foods roundup where bananas came out on top.

In North America, we’ve been eating bananas since the late 1800s; long enough for them to be a perfectly normal staple even though they come from afar. Besides being carted into grocery stores from other continents, bananas have a pretty dark side; poor worker conditions, human rights abuses, child labor and beyond. A banana might get five stars on various nutritional elements, but that doesn’t account for all the bad that happens in the banana industry behind the scene.

Even foods that are grown closer to home come with their issues. All that out of season stuff we see everywhere. In a supermarket, where we can buy anything we want at any time of the year, a lot of us don’t even know what’s in season and what isn’t.

But just because you can buy something, doesn’t mean you should. A caprese salad in winter for example; those tomatoes are not what they could be come summer. Stocking up on avocados every week, even though that consumption is drying up water supplies. Honeybees dying because growers have to cart them in to pollinate California’s almond crops and they’re in turn exposed to deadly pesticides. Or a morning smoothie made with raspberries and blueberries in the middle of winter. Again, just because you can make it doesn’t mean you should.

The reality is, that when we think about “healthy foods,” we are only thinking about “healthy” as it pertains to ourselves.

Choosing healthy foods is most often about about how I, the individual, will benefit from the consumption of said food. But food isn’t just about our own health. It’s about our community’s health, and the planet’s. And if we want to eat better, we need to reorient our selfish thinking into one with a more global outlook.

If there is one thing that’s sure when it comes to nutrition, it’s that we need more real food in our diet. Certainly bananas are better than a Twix bar. But focusing on only the nutrients of a food is a one-sided solution.

Eating well can be a very simple thing, but it requires a holistic approach, it requires thinking not only about what the food will give us, but where the food comes from, how it was grown, whether or not it’s in season. These are just as much essentials of a healthy diet as thinking about nutrition and nutrition only.

So next time you’re thinking about what healthy foods to eat, do more than look at the nutrition label.

Related on EcoSalon

Do We Really Know How to Eat Healthy? Foodie Underground

Is Doing a Detox Diet Pointless? Foodie Underground

Healthy Foods and Eating Well, it’s All About Simplicity: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: robin_24

The post What the Healthiest Foods Don’t Take Into Consideration: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.