Why is local food better? (revised)

Jonathan Lung

Why is local food better?

Buying and eating local food from a farmer’s market creates a satisfying and enriching feeling of eating a healthier alternative, but it also helps with sustainability as we use less artificial material and use more of the natural world in the way it was meant to be. When my family and I would go to the farmer’s market every Saturday morning, I always enjoyed tasting the fresh honey dripping from the spoon or the sweet smell of oranges that was picked the day before. To compare the supermarket and local products, it is hardly a competition. People in the 21st century are eating worse than we could have ever possibly imagined: eating artificial flavored food, manufactured can goods, and processed meat. While the low cost might be an incentive to buy all of the supermarket products we have now, our health and well being have no price.
When comparing food products from a supermarket to a local market, the taste differs by a large margin. I often use lobsters as an example in the difference in taste. When we wanted lobsters, we would always get it from the stores. However when we visited Florida’s coastline, my parents brought several live lobsters that were caught not from port. Not knowing any difference between store-bought food and fresh food, I questioned my parent’s logic, wondering why they would deal with a live lobster when a cleaned out, prepared lobster was next door in Wal-Mart. After eating the fresh lobster, I finally understood the differences between the lobsters in Wal-Mart and the lobsters from the fishing boats. The enriching flavor sticks with every bite from a freshly caught lobster, a quality that a store lobster lacks.

We live to eat so why not eat the best possible food available to us?