Should I eat Seasonally?

Does eating seasonally, organically and locally affect your health? [warning - contains logic and common sense]

in the past I would have said a carrot is a carrot and that's about it.

Nutritionally relatively equal to one another. I would also have said organic is just expensive carrots for the hoity toity and lah-di-dah brigade.

But I've learnt a thing or two in the last few years.

If you were to take a bag of carrot seeds - all from the same carrot.

You plant a few in regular soil another few in poor soil

and another few in well nurtured (organic) soil.

there will certainly be a nutritional difference in each group of carrots. The carrot absorbs the nutrients from the soil through it's roots and uses those building blocks to grow

Even though they came from the same seeds, were planted at the same time and, for the sake of argument, all in the same region of a country. So theoretically they all got exposed to the same climatic conditions of rainfall, sunlight, wind and temperature. I think we'd all agree that the carrot that was grown in the best quality soil would have the highest nutritional value - vitamins, minerals etc. We could also repeat this little thought experiment and include another country where climatic conditions are completely different. Keeping the soil the same we have another batch of the same carrot seeds - 1 in poor soil, another in regular soil and a third in organic soil.

This time though we move these seeds and soil to another sunnier country, it's a bit drier but we water them so they get the same amount of water but leave everything else the same. Would that effect the nutritional value of the carrot?? You might think no, the soil is the same, the water is the same the only difference is the sunlight and temperature. Surely that doesn't effect the nutrition of the carrot. You're right, it doesn't effect the carrot at a nutritional level but it does effect it in other ways. The power of the sun, when you move towards the equator, increases in intensity. That is a signal to the carrot and it will alter how it grows and behaves even though the soil and water are the same. The intensity of the sunlight is captured by the growing carrot, imprinted into its genetics and nutrition like a barcode. [We see this in trees' rings, we know when there have been dry/cold years compared to warmer/wetter years by looking at the qualities of it's rings] Much like our humble carrot, we humans are also affected in this way.

We all come from very similar seeds. - same carrot seeds We grow up in a variety of environments - soil quality We have different thoughts, beliefs, values, histories. - internal environment - soil quality We are exposed to the Sun and climatic conditions of where we inhabit. - external environment We too are coded with sunlight. The seeds that made me coded me for being a human. My internal soil, the gut microbiome, understands WHERE I am and my climate. Light is absorbed through my skin and eyes much like in a carrots leaves.

My body is CODED or programmed for where i am. It also expects food from where I am. The coding between the carrot and my body are matched if I eat the one that is grown locally. So, in an ideal world I would only eat organically produced food from near where I live to not only get the best nutrition from my food but also enable my body to unlock that nutrition because it more easily understands the coding of the various elements that make up that carrot. Summary:

• Get your body out in the sunlight - it needs it! Your light exposure, natural or unnatural affects your health.

• Not all food is created equal - even though it looks the same

• You are a product of not just what you eat, what you think and how you behave but also of the LIGHT conditions that you are exposed to.

• Do your best to eat organic and local when you can, as often as you can.

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Pete is a health coach and AMN practitioner - he has devoted the last 7 years of his life to learning, teaching and helping people to recover from long term pains. He works 1:1 with you to resolve your problems as quickly as possible uncovering the reasons for your condition and helping you to resolve them via your neurology.