Eat Seasonally

Eat Seasonally

In the vast intelligence of nature, plants sprout, bud, fruit, and ripen in different seasons. Every wild creature in an eco-system takes part in this dance of exchanging vital force with the living world in the moment of what it is providing. Ayurveda, and other ancestral medical systems that understand your food is your medicine are rigorously seasonally attuned, because your body is of nature, and therefore linked to the metabolic cycles of the natural world. In some seasons, you need to store more fat (winter), in other seasons you need more protein or carbohydrate. In spring we need more bitter and astringent foods to ease out of the sluggishness of winter. The simplest way to enter into relationship with this natural intelligence, aside from learning Ayurveda (which is remarkable), is to harmonize your diet with what is in season. All that is required to do this is to start shopping at a farmer’s market, or begin visiting farms in your area. What is in season is what grows where you live. Industrial agriculture and modern transport allow us to ship bananas from Ecuador, or strawberries from South America in the middle of the North American winter. Although exotic and appealing, these products are out-of-synch with the seasonal requirements of the place where we live, and thus don’t help our bodies come into alignment with where they actually are.

Seasonal foods carry within them the intelligence of the season, and are adaptogenic: they re-inforce and attune our bodies to what is present around us. The more in contact we are with the living world around us (go outside!), the more our bodies will naturally align with the cycles of the season, and what is available in the living world. Consider–Americans who are outside seven percent of the time don’t actually live in California or Missouri or Massachusetts: they live in a box. Wherever your physical address actually is, the real address of a person outside seven percent of the time is the bed, couch, and the desk, with an excellent view of a screen. You don't wanna live in a box.