When it comes to produce, should we choose organic or local? The obvious answer is “both.” But when local, organic produce is not available, which is the greener and healthier choice?

People who vote for organic will argue that organic is always healthier because it is not genetically modified and is not sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. On the other hand, many of the eco-conscious cite the enormous carbon footprint involved in the transportation of produce. It is a bit ridiculous to buy organic California grown oranges in Florida and vice-versa. Buying locally not only saves on fossil fuels, it also keeps money in the local economy.

So, if you’re buying for health, you should always buy organic, and if you’re buying for environmental reasons, you should always buy local, right? Not necessarily.

Which is Healthier?

Locally grown fruits and vegetables may actually be healthier than organic fruits and vegetables shipped in from afar. While GMOs should be avoided at all costs, if health is your primary concern, try to find out if the farmer practices crop rotation. This is necessary to determine the nutritional value of the produce. Consider the distance organic produce travels with the substantial loss of enzymes and nutrients compared to fresh produce. And remember that organic farmers are allowed to use some harmful pesticides under many circumstances. Then consider the significant increase in vitamin and mineral content in produce grown on local farms that practice crop rotation.

The vitamins and mineral content of produce is not always higher when produce is organic, not when the nutrition is determined by the health of the soil and the freshness of the produce. While organic practices typically do promote healthier soil and more nutritious produce, with big business fully on the organic bandwagon soil quality is not always taken into consideration. Consequently, crop rotation, one of the best ways to help restore the soil, can be ignored.

The average person, that is, a person whose health is not degraded to the point where chemical sensitivities are an issue, would do better to ingest a little more pesticides with a lot more vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and enzymes. It behooves the consumer who shops in this manner to choose wisely. If buying conventional for health’s sake, conventional produce that typically contain the highest concentrations of pesticides, like berries and apples, should be avoided. It is likely that the increased benefits of local fresh strawberries are nullified by the enormous amounts of pesticides conventional farmers use to grow them.

Which is Greener?

When purchasing produce, we should consider long term ramifications of decisions. Voting with the pocketbook is the most powerful vote anyone can make considering its frequency and potential to evoke real change. Money talks. Every time a purchase of conventional produce is made a vote is cast for non-organic, environmentally harmful practices. Buying non-organic produce encourages everything the environmentally conscious stand against. Purchasing local conventional produce for the purpose of saving carbon emissions is penny wise and pound foolish.

To further complicate matters, the way food miles are calculated often misses a big piece of the puzzle. When purchasing an apple grown locally, for example, one should take into account the fact that the apple grown on a small scale farm may have arrived to the market via a small farmer’s pickup truck that traveled 65 miles to the market with around 100 apples or so. Compare this to a semi truck carrying two or three thousand apples. We can do the math to calculate the fuel consumed per apple, but in most cases, the math gets way too complicated. Farmers often bring their produce to large farmer’s markets in their area via their pickups and flatbeds, where the produce is shipped all over the country via tractor trailers.

A Better Idea

Ask the local grocery store manager if s/he carries local, organic produce. When shopping at farmer’s markets ask the vendors if they have organic produce and if they practice crop rotation. When the answer is no, move on. This is how change happens.

Even Better

Grow as much of your own food as you can.

Healthy Cooking Methods

How healthy are the various cooking methods? The answer depends on what you cook and how you cook it. If your idea of a healthy main course is blackened fish, crispy fried chicken, or caramelized ribs, you’ve probably never heard of advanced Glycated End Products (also known as advanced glycated end products).

Advanced glycated end products, which were discovered by Louis Maillard in 1912, are a class of chemical byproducts that result from the combination of protein and sugar (usually glucose) when food is cooked by excessive heat.1

Advanced glycated end products can also be formed by the body when too much refined sugar is eaten and elevated blood sugar levels are maintained for too long a time. And food manufacturers intentionally increase the number of advanced glycated end products in food, either by adding sugar or by browning food elements.

Advanced glycated end products aren’t to be confused with glycoproteins, even though they share the same building blocks. A glycoprotein forms when glucose and proteins bind using the normal digestive enzymes with which we all come equipped. This process presupposes gently cooked food and moderate sugar intake from whole fruits and vegetables and very little or no refined sugar. Glycoproteins are part of how the body feeds itself. Advanced glycated end products are something else entirely.

Humans evolved eating raw food and food cooked slowly over a small open flame. Today we cook food quickly and at high heat by flash heating, microwaving, deep-frying, and barbecuing. All of these methods form advanced glycated end products, which are difficult to metabolize and nearly indestructible.

Our immune system reacts to advanced glycated end products as foreign bodies. When our diet is inundated with advanced glycated end products, the immune system is overworked and becomes exhausted, which may lead to allergies or disease. advanced glycated end products spur the release of cytokines, which are part of the inflammatory process. Cytokines collect in the joints of people with arthritis. Another interesting fact about advanced glycated end products and inflammation is that free radical production is nearly five times greater with glycated protein compared to regular protein.4

Not all cooking methods are created equal. Studies have shown that boiling, steaming, or any method involving water tends to greatly limit the number of advanced glycated end products that form. Turning down the heat and extending the cooking time can also create fewer advanced glycated end products than other methods.

There are two different temperature ranges to be aware of: the heat labile point around 245° F and the much lower advanced glycated end products threshold between 120° F and 180° F. The heat labile point applies to fats and proteins that change chemically without the presence of sugar and has similar health risk as the advanced glycated end products discussed here.

How to Avoid Advanced Glycated End Products

• Turn down the heat and extend the cooking time
• Stop eating sugar (The average American eats 140 pounds of sugar per year.3)
• Cook with water (boil, steam and poach)
• Avoid processed foods which are likely to have sugar or browned food elements
• Drink green tea (Recent studies have shown that green tea help remove advanced glycated end products from your body.4)

The following is a small sample of diseases and conditions that can be helped by limiting advanced glycated end products either by changing how we cook or cutting out the sugar:

• Inflammation
• Aging
• Diabetes
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Macular Degeneration
• Hypertension
• Arthritis
• Kidney Disease

This list is not inclusive, but is just enough for all of us to be mindful that how we cook our food is at least as important as what foods we eat.

Eating raw can help a person be healthier, but it can be a hard choice. In some cases, cooking is necessary for economic reasons like extending the shelf life of food. For example, cooking turns stale bread into toast, which tastes the same regardless of how fresh the bread was. Striking the balance between killing off pathogens in poorly stored raw food and overcooking has always been delicate. And for many people the practice of cooking is so ingrained in their culture that eating raw food is unthinkable.  So if you must cook, cook gently.

1.  “Effects of High Temperatures on Meats.” Food and Chemical Toxicology Apr 1985:23(12).
2. Mullarkey, CJ., et al. “Free Radical Generation by Early Gycation Products: A Mechanism for Acceleration of Arthogenesis in Diabetes.”

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• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
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• Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid
• How to Cure Lyme Disease and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally