Is a zero-food-miles, "in season" diet really better?
Published on 6/5/2013
Does eating the wholesome produce of the home garden in its season really bring benefits to the body that absorbs them?
That is what an interview published in the Corriere Salute supplement asked Dr. Andrea Ghiselli, a nutritionist at the CRA (the national council for research and experimentation in Agriculture, a special-purpose body of the MIPAF), from which it emerges that the seasonality of an agricultural product (thus mainly fruit and vegetables) and its origin do influence the quantity of nutritional elements the product actually contains.
Which is to say that the Bassano asparagus harvested and eaten within a radius of a few kilometres (extremely fresh), and therefore at the height of its harvest season, will certainly contain higher quantities of nutrients than the asparagus that adorns pizzas and risottos in any season and in any part of the country.
Nevertheless, from a medical-nutritional standpoint, the interview states, provided that the right quantities of vegetables and fruit are consumed, it is fine to use vegetables and fruits that also come from exotic countries or greenhouse crops, stored in warehouses and lacking the freshness that comes from the product's seasonality.