Seasons' eating

If you want to reduce your UPF intake, eating seasonally and locally helps, says nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert in her new book The Unprocessed Plate. Luckily, August offers lots of vegetables and salad leaves to munch on!

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Seasonal eating is important to embrace when trying to reduce our ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption, as fruits and vegetables that are in season are packed with flavour, making them more appealing to our taste buds. They're also packed with nutrients, which is better for our health.

The idea of 'seasonal eating' simply means that you eat produce that is grown and harvested locally to where you live, and you also eat this produce during the season that it has been harvested.

For example, for someone living in the UK, consuming British asparagus in the month of May would be considered seasonal eating. If you live in Peru, eating avocados during the summer months is seasonal eating. However, the key here is that if you live in the UK and you also eat avocados during the summer months, this is NOT seasonal eating, as the avocados were not grown or harvested locally.

'Global seasonality' is where the food is produced and refers to food produced in season but not necessarily consumed where harvested. 'Local seasonality' is based on where the food is produced and then consumed. This refers to foods harvested and eaten locally during the growing season.