As you walk into the grocery store, the vegetables and fruits from across the globe are waxed and shined to greet your shopping cart. With apples from Fuji and tomatoes from Chile, the produce department can remain unchanged regardless of the season – time, temperature, and weather only determine the country of origin.
This food system is completely dependant on petroleum: it fertilizes and protects the produce from pests and weeds as it grows, it fuels the trucks, planes, and boats that bring the produce from all reaches of the globe to our tables, it refrigerates the produce as it is transported and as it sits on the shelves of the store until we set it in our baskets, and it likely is how we drive the food to our homes once we leave the store. The long distances traversed by the produce we buy has its downsides – for the environment, for our health, and for our tastebuds.
One of the most obvious flavor and quality differences can be found in a simple red tomato. Watery and tasteless, grocery store tomatoes are no match for the juicy, colorful tomatoes for sale at a local farmers’ market. The following is the recipe for a standard grocery store tomato, bought in the winter off-season.
INGREDIENTS: Tomatoes, Methyl Bromide, Chloropicrin, Ethylene Gas.
PROCEDURE:
1. Grow massive fields of tomatoes. Tomatoes love heat, sun, and water – which, unfortunately, so do many pests and weeds. In order to combat these less desirable competitors, a whole host of toxic fumigants are used to grow conventional tomatoes, including methyl bromide and chloropicrin. These chemicals pollute nearby waterways and spread into the air, damaging the workers, neighboring communities, wildlife, and depleting the ozone.
Ripening Rooms
2. Pick ‘em green – but not for frying. In order to make the long trek from the field to the store, tomatoes are picked well before they are ripe. Tomatoes are treated with ethylene gas to mimic the natural ripening process, saving time and money but costing flavor and quality in the process. One of the typical ripening rooms is shown to the left.
3. Sort and Package. Machines and conveyor belts – which cut the human labor costs of tomato production significantly – sort, box, wrap, and label the tomatoes. They are packed into trucks, airplanes, and boats and sent around the world.
4. Bon Voyage! Trucks pull out from the distribution warehouses and travel around the country, leaving boxes of chemically-ripened tomatoes at the grocery stores as they go: the average tomato – and most food in general – travels around 1500 miles from the farm before it reaches a dinner table.
5. Take them home for a (watery) treat. Customers pick up the tomatoes at the grocery story, looking for a juicy
Tomato Sorter
tomato with it’s high count of Vitamin C and the powerful antioxidant lycopene. Unfortunately, these well-traveled tomatoes are likely not as nutrient-rich as the ones available from a local farmstand.
Eat outside the box! Shop your local farmers’ market to find some unique heirloom tomato varieties not available in stores to make a Multi-Colored Heirloom Gazpacho soup!
[...] of fruits and vegetables are available year-round in the grocery stores’ produce departments, but the negative effects of such a global food system on the environment and our health don’t seem…. As anyone who loves tomatoes knows: there is no better advertisement for the carbon-cutting [...]
The number of steps involved in picking and shipping tomatoes across the globe is astounding, although not new information for me. Buying and eating locally grown, organic vegetables is so much better for the environment and your health. Thanks.