So you are buying organic, and you are buying local. What else could you do to stop the environmental damages caused by our conventional food industry? Buy and eat food that requires less energy to produce.

Why Buy Seasonal

When you don't buy seasonal, you buy produce that comes from very far away, and your produce becomes attached to two key concepts: food-miles and production phase.

Food miles, as many of us already know, represent the distance food travels from where it is grown or produced to where it is purchased or eaten by the end-user. It is also less popularly called transportation phase.The greater your food miles, the greater your carbon footprint. But how your produce is grown can have an even greater environmental impact.

Indeed, production phase represents the energy used to produce a certain food, and that phase is responsible for higher greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation phase, according to a recent study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers have found that food transportation from producer to retailer only represents 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, while the actual production of food represents 83% of the average American household's footprint impact (for food consumption). Of course, some foods have a higher percentage of greenhouse gas emissions than others, such as red meat vs. chicken or fish, so shifting diets, as the authors of the study suggest, will have a more significant impact than just buying local.

A Guide To Seasonal Produce

For the sake of our planet, we need to buy and eat more seasonal products that require mostly Mother Nature's help. No greenhouse needed, no energy spent unnecessarily. The NRDC has conveniently compiled a list of seasonal produce available state by state: click here to know when a specific produce is in season, and you can also have access to many recipes.

What You Buy (Or Not) Matters

So next time you are about to jump with delight on some organic local strawberries in January, please think again. Waiting to eat products when nature intended us to will make us appreciate them more.  Buying seasonal may well mean discovering fruits and vegetables that you had never paid attention to or were perhaps intimidated to try. So do shop at your local market or farmer, do buy organic food, but also reduce your meat consumption and eat seasonal fruits and vegetables.