Eating locally is all fine and dandy until you want to eat oranges. 

At least when you’re from Idaho. 

I love cute little stores and farmers markets but the reality is that, if I was determined to eat purely locally sourced foods in my small town in northern Idaho, I might never have eaten an orange. 

There are plenty of reasons to try to eat locally, whether that means buying groceries at farmers markets, going to local stores rather than chains, or getting food straight from farmers who grow their own produce and slaughter their own meat.

For one, eating fresh food doesn’t just taste better. Fresh produce also actually has more nutrients than produce that has sat around, as shown in a 2017 study done by the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. 

The Organic Center did a study in 2007 to show that industrialized meat production actually can lower the nutritional value of the meat itself. The same goes for dairy. 

Large-scale food production that grocery chains rely on are all but guaranteed to use pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizer which can be harmful both to the land and to anyone eating the products.  

The closer you can get to the source of your food, the better it is. At the very least, you can find out about what is in and on what you eat. In the best case scenario, there will be fewer preservatives or poisons on that food. 

Along with this, you have the chance to support a town’s economy by buying locally produced food. Especially for those of us from small towns, this allows smaller businesses and farmers to compete with more large-scale operations. 

People also argue that eating locally is better for the environment, because reducing the distance traveled to deliver food might mean fossil fuel emissions could go down. 

Eating locally, however, is in reality a luxury that most can’t afford and also severely limits the types of food one can eat.

Buying local food in America will almost always be more expensive than simply going to Walmart. 

Yes, it may taste better. Yes, it is healthier. But can I afford it? As a tragically broke college junior, no, I can’t. And I only have to feed myself and occasionally a starving roomate. 

Food prices and inflation are making it difficult for families to get sufficient meals from pricey groceries at large stores. It would be unreasonable to expect them to eat locally at all, let alone a majority of the time. 

And not only am I broke, I currently live in Michigan and my home town is in the hills of northern Idaho — both locations with freezing winters and minimal sunshine.

When you live far distant from our lovely world’s equator and have to go through all four seasons, the list of fresh foods isn’t very long for most of the year. 

In the cold winter months, I’m not sure it matters that I would get more vitamins from a fresh orange than from one that has been shipped across the world. I’m trying to avoid scurvy. And more importantly, I really like to eat oranges.

I also like eating bananas, so I tend to be grateful for chains like Kroger and Walmart that allow me to get my daily dose of potassium. 

Eating locally is great, if you can afford it. But it also is limited by the seasons making your choice of fresh produce extremely sparse at certain times of the year. 

For most people, centering a diet around locally sourced foods isn’t really a viable option, and they tend to default to Walmart. However, be aware that eating locally still is a viable alternative. Right now, I just choose to keep my money and enjoy my fruit with a dash of pesticide. 

 

Ameera Wilson is a junior studying English.