Here in the Mid-Atlantic, the weather has made a gradual shift from warm to cold, which has brought me, as it always does, to consider the wisdom of eating seasonally. As I replace tomatoes and corn with winter squash and hardy greens, I am occasionally tempted to let summer’s melody linger on in my cooking, but I can think of several reasons to resist the temptation.

Seasonal foods are more nutritious because they are generally grown and harvested close to home. They give us the nutrients we need to support health in our own unique climate. They are also more nutritious because they’re harvested when ripe. Produce that travels is generally picked before it’s ready. It might look ripe when we buy it, its color may have bloomed, but nutritional value comes from the stem. So, food can’t become more nutritious after it’s harvested, only less so, no matter how it appears.
Food harvested in season and close to where we live tastes better because it’s fresher, and because local varieties are grown for flavor rather than their ability to be shipped across miles.
Seasonal foods grown nearby are cleaner since they are not treated with the chemicals needed to preserve them during shipping and storage.
Buying foods that grow nearby and that are harvested in season is more economical. It leaves shipping costs and middle men out of the equation, especially if we buy directly from farmers, but also if we buy local produce at the grocery store.

There is another reason to eat seasonally and it is one worthy of standing alone. Our bodies attune to a natural rhythm, one that is synchronized to the seasons of the year and the hours of the day. Spring and summer (like morning and early afternoon) inspire a building up and expending of energy. Fall and winter (like late afternoon and evening) are better suited to slowing down, pulling inward, and allowing ourselves time to rest. Eating seasonal foods supports this natural rhythm. When we disregard it—when, for example, we eat zucchini or melon in the winter and burn the candle late into the night—we may become less resilient. And it is resilience, an inner vitality that enables us to recover quickly, that maximizes our potential for strength and well being. So eating seasonally is one important way of maintaining optimal health.

Finding seasonal foods at the grocery store can be a trick because at any time of the year we now find produce that was once available for only a few weeks or months. To complicate matters, if you don’t garden, you may not know what foods are in season. Even so, you can learn to “read” your produce to predict how it will affect you by paying attention to qualities that give you clues.

Cooling foods are suitable for warm weather. They have a high water content and are best eaten raw or lightly cooked. Think cucumbers, watermelon, and juicy berries. Cooling foods like radishes, sprouts, green beans, and zucchini grow quickly and many reflect the darker colors of the rainbow: blue, green and purple. Tropical foods like bananas and pineapple are especially cooling, as are fresh herbs like cilantro, basil and chives. A cooling diet should ideally contain a higher proportion of fresh foods, and less protein and fat. It should contain tender leafy greens and fewer cooked foods, and cooking should be light. Steaming is an ideal way to cook foods in warm weather.

Warming foods are suitable for cool weather. They’re harder, drier and more compact, and they require more heat to prepare. Think butternut squash, dried beans, parsnips, and garlic. Warming foods like winter squash and sweet potatoes grow slowly and are generally lighter in color: red, orange, yellow and white. Dried spices, like cinnamon, nutmeg, and peppercorns are warming. A warming diet should contain a higher proportion of cooked foods, along with richer proteins and fats. Animal foods are warming, as are longer cooking times. Slow stewing and roasting are especially suited to cool weather.

Keep in mind that warming and cooking are relative terms. A strawberry is more warming than a mango, but it is still cooling—that is, still not well suited to a snowy day.

Also, remember that the way you prepare foods can influence whether they become warming or cooling. Consider a carrot, which can be harvested fresh in spring, summer, and fall. It can also be served out of storage in winter, so it is seasonal year round. In warmer months, you can juice it or grate it into a salad. In colder months, you may want to cook it into a soup, puree it, or roast it with olive oil. Do you see how when we want to make a food more warming, we cook it longer, at a higher temperature, and with added fat? The temperature at which you serve foods also matters. I eat soup year-round, but cooked for less time and served lukewarm in summer, and simmered longer and served very warm in winter.

The link between food and health is often painted in broad sweeps and generalizations. Fats are bad, salt is bad, lean protein is good. You know what I mean. While over-simplifications like these may reflect a level of truth, they span too wide a spectrum and encompass more than they should. If we hope to discuss the link between food and health in a meaningful way, and to create meals that nourish us without being unnecessarily limiting, generalizations should give way to distinctions.

Consider the question of meat and whether or not its consumption is linked to a variety of cancers. The National Cancer Institute says that it is. So do the National Institute of Health, Harvard University, the World Health Organization, and the American Institute for Cancer Research.

To these and others, I say, we should all say, tell us what you mean by meat. For as long as there have been people, there have been meat eaters, and these meat eaters didn’t always get cancer. So, we need qualitative distinctions that will help us make sense of the link:

How were the animals raised? Are we talking about meat from cows that spent their lives on concrete under artificial lighting, eating genetically-altered corn and soy, and receiving antibiotics and hormones before being trucked long distance for slaughter? Or do we mean meat from cows that lived on grass in the sunshine, without medication or grain supplements, who were then slaughtered on the farm or nearby? These are sources of two very different meats.
What varieties of meat are we referring to and was the meat processed? Do we mean muscle meat, organs, or stock made from bones? Are we discussing processed meats like cold cuts and sausage, or unprocessed meats without additives or preservatives?
How was the meat cooked? Was the meat charred on a grill? Baked or broiled at high temperatures? Or was it boiled or roasted at a low temperature?
How much meat was consumed? Do we mean large portions of meat served as an entree or small portions served as an accompaniment? Meat eaten daily, weekly, or only now and then? Which of these is linked to cancer?

With so many unanswered questions, and with an obvious need for solid information, it can be a challenge to resolve this issue for ourselves. Whenever I’m unsure of what to eat or what preparation methods to use, I look to the past, to a time when people didn’t get the diseases we’re trying to avoid. In this case, the past provides a key piece of information. The incidence of cancer among traditional people, hunter-gatherers and those living in non-industrial cultures, was exceedingly rare. These people ate both cooked and raw meat and, because our genes still bear traces of our hunter-gatherer heritage, they were also our genetic brethren.

Inuits

Let’s start with the Inuits, who have been widely studied. As I learned from Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D., Vilhjalmur Stefansson was a 19th century anthropologist and arctic explorer who undertook a search for cancer among the Inuit in Canada in Alaska. These are people who, at the time, consumed a diet of 80% fat, nearly all from raw and cooked fish and meat. They were physically active for part of the year, and relatively inactive in the coldest months. They also tended to be lean. Stefansson found no trace of cancer among them. American and European physicians were inspired by these results and conducted their own search from 1850-1920, studying 25,000-50,000 Inuits a year. They also found no trace of cancer. Incidentally, they also found no heart disease, obesity, tooth decay or diabetes. You may be wondering if the Inuit had physiological differences that allowed them to eat this way. Stefansson wondered this as well and so in the early 1900s, under the supervision of the American Medical Association, he and his fellow researchers subsisted for several years on the Inuit diet, remaining healthy and strong with no sign of disease.

Other Traditional Cultures

Hundreds of other hunter-gatherer cultures have been studied, and while all obtained a portion of their calories from meat, many up to half their calories or more, cancer was rare if it existed at all. Take Sir Robert McCarrison’s study of the Asian Hunzas; he found the 11,000 people he examined to be entirely cancer-free. In contrast to the Inuits, they ate a plant-based diet but supplemented it with grass-fed dairy and a small amount of meat, including organ meat. There is also Dr. Eugene Payne, who over 25 years studied 60,000 natives in Brazil and Ecuador and found no evidence of cancer. And in 1913, Dr. Albert Schweitzer set up a hospital in Gabon, West Africa where he examined more than 10,000 natives and likewise found them to be cancer-free.

My Conclusion

There are many more studies and examples, but we all possess common sense and can ask questions and seek answers ourselves. My own research turned up this information. The world’s highest levels of beef are currently consumed in Uruguay, Argentina, and Hong Kong. I looked at beef because red meat is the variety most often implicated in cancer studies. But the world’s highest rates of colorectal cancer, the type most often linked to red meat consumption, are reported to be in Hungary, South Korea, and Slovakia. If meat is carcinogenic, shouldn’t the highest rate of meat-related cancer be in Uruguay or Argentina? Uruguay is 16th on the list and Argentina isn’t even in the top 25.

We all need to be wary of generalizations when they conflict with common sense, with regard to this question and all questions. No matter what experts tell us, our current understanding of food and its link to health is rudimentary; there is much we still don’t know. When we have questions, it can help to look to the past, and to respect and value the wisdom within the food ways and lifestyles of people who didn’t contract the diseases we’re trying to avoid.

It’s likely there is a link between the consumption of certain kinds of meat and cancer: meat that is charred or cooked at a high temperature, for example, or meats like cold cuts and sausages that are highly processed. It might be the chemicals in the meat, or it could be the processing methods or the way the animals are raised. It is also possible there are other factors at work when modern meat eaters get cancer. Regardless, the studies of traditional people and our common sense tell us that it is possible to be a meat eater and remain cancer free.

The Why and How of Eating Seasonally

Questioning the Meat-Cancer Link

Archive Favorites

Sourdough Thoughts and Lessons