The Northeast Regional Food Guide: Eating Seasonally

Northeast Regional Food Guide Fact Sheets

Becoming a Regional and Seasonal Eater

Perhaps you've seen the words "in season" at your supermarket or on a restaurant menu. Have you ever wondered what that means?

If you're wondering how to become a more regional and seasonal eater, the following steps are for you.

Tips for Eating Foods from the Northeast

When you choose produce in your supermarket or food store, notice where it was grown. This may sound simple, but not many people do it. If you have the option of buying a locally grown item, do so. Remember, how you choose to spend your food dollars makes a difference!

Several juices and ciders are made from fruits grown in the Northeast-particularly cranberry, grape, and apple. Try to find ones made from regional sources. Supermarket managers are becoming aware that using the words "local" and "locally grown" is good marketing for business, so it may be getting easier to identify what foods come from local sources.

If you're not sure where produce was grown, find out. Ask your supermarket produce department to post signs identifying where produce is from and to offer items from northeastern farms whenever possible.

Become a member of a community-supported farm (CSA). Picking up your weekly share from a CSA is one of the best ways to learn first hand what is grown locally and when it is available. Many CSAs also provide recipe ideas for how to use the products that you will receive.

When you eat in a restaurant, order foods that are or can be grown or produced in the region. Some restaurants currently specialize in creating menus from local foods as well as those produced using organic, IPM, and other sustainable methods.

Get involved in food planning committees at schools and other institutions in your area. Help identify local and regional alternatives to current purchases.

Tips for Seasonal Eating

There are many ways to start incorporating local foods in your diet throughout the seasons. Although it is not reasonable to try to convert your entire diet to local, seasonal foods, you can make many small changes around the calendar. Here are some ideas to help you get started:

During the summer and fall buy produce from a farmers' market, roadside stand, U-pick farm or from produce identified as "local" at your supermarket or food store. Sweet corn is fresher-and usually sweeter-right after picking, and tomatoes can be tastier and juicier when they're vine ripened.

During the winter months include some of the following familiar fruits and vegetables in your diet: potatoes, winter squash, carrots, cabbage, onions, beets, garlic, apples, and pears.

In the winter try at least two of these less familiar vegetables: celeriac, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, or kohlrabi.

In the summer and fall enjoy the abundance of the Northeast's fresh fruit and vegetable harvest.

During the winter, when fresh produce is not available, explore the wide variety of northeastern-grown produce that is canned, frozen, dried, and stored.

A new food guide, the Northeast Regional Food Guide, was developed to help consumers learn which foods are not available fresh in the Northeast during the winter. Chances are, if you are like most Americans, you eat some of these foods regularly. To become a more seasonal eater, start replacing one or two nonregional foods that you eat often with alternatives that are produced locally (e.g., celeriac for celery). If you usually eat an imported item once a day, try cutting back to once a week and so on. Use the Northeast Regional Food Guide to find nutritionally compatible substitutes that are available regionally. A recent nutritional analysis of the Northeast Regional Food Guide showed that a diet composed of foods from the region more than adequately met nutrient requirements for good health-even in winter!

During the summer visit a U-pick farm, and pick enough to can or freeze some of what you pick. Berries are easy to freeze: put them on a cookie sheet and place it in the freezer; after they're frozen, store them in small airtight plastic bags in the freezer. Your county's Cooperative Extension office is a good source of information on freezing and canning. Though home-based food preservation seems to be a dying (or dead) art, small-scale food processing is a growing phenomenon in the Northeast and may mean that it will be easier to find foods preserved from the local harvest in the near future.

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