eating out-of season fruits and veggies takes a toll on your health, your wallet, and the environment.

(photo: rhett maxwell/wikimedia commons)

but how bad can eating out-of-season produce really be?

the cost of growing and harvesting out-of-season produce is much higher than regular season growth. that watermelon you are about to buy in the middle of november was probably grown in a heated greenhouse thousands of miles away. the increased cost of harvesting and bringing that produce to the united states means that your grocer has to raise prices in order to curb production costs.

according to the natural resources defense council, “the smog-forming emissions from importing fruits and vegetables are equivalent to the annual emissions from 1.5 million cars.” purchasing imported, out-of-season produce only contributes to this environmental cost.

eating fresh means enjoying the nutritional value of that produce. but once a fruit is harvested, it begins to lose the benefits that fresh produce has to offer. after a fruit or vegetable has been picked, shipped, and put in a grocery store thousands of miles from its origin, its vitamins have deteriorated quite a bit.

are there alternatives to out-of season fruit?

instead, look for your fruits and vegetables in the freezer section the next time you’re at the grocery store. frozen produce is a great choice during the non-growing seasons.

frozen fruits and veggies were packaged while fresh. studies suggest frozen produce may have higher nutrient content than regular produce. this is because freezing prevents nutrients from leaching out of the produce.

not only do frozen fruits and veggies offer health benefits that regular, out-of-season produce does not, but it is also a financially conscious option. going frozen means avoiding the increased cost of out-of-season produce typically seen during fall and winter.

(photo: maryland pride/wikimedia commons)    

some companies that sell frozen produce even make a point to be environmentally conscious as well. some companies take their unused trimmings and use them as compost, while others throw them out.

less travel to get food to the grocery store means a lower environmental cost, so also make a point to research where your frozen munchies are coming from. companies like green giant grow most of their frozen goods in the united states, for example.

during fall and winter this year, opt out of out-of-season fruits. instead, spend some time in the frozen section to see what options are available to you.

as i looked at my own hands, soft and pale, i realized that i would never understand her day-to-day life. i would never understand what it felt like to have the fate of your family sifting through your fingers. i knelt down next to her and let her show me the most efficient method to pulling weeds. images danced through  my mind as i remembered my childhood of gardening with my own mother. this was a different world and yet there i was, immersed in the livelihood of her people. this was their culture. agriculture to these women wasn’t a career, it was a way of life. it was the focus of their day, because without it, they wouldn’t know a tomorrow.

later that day i wandered through the markets, over stimulated by the aroma and clamor that i came to recognize as a mixture of sweat, curry, and chickens. women gossiped around me as they quite literally sold the fruit of their labor. my whole life i had witnessed separate sectors of agriculture, rarely did they overlap. here in india, they all blended together in an assembly of noise and color. the women grew, harvested, transported, and sold the food. as i walked on, i noticed that most of the food was sold in the open and a vast majority of it was already beginning to rot. wasted food meant wasted nutrients and yet there was nothing that could be done. they would sell and eat what they could before the hunger season set in.

to fight this scenario, we created kinosol. kinosol is a mobile solar dehydrator for fruits and vegetables. it has a mylar lined storage unit to lengthen shelf life and bicycle hitch and tires have been added to ensure markets could be easily accessible. kinosol’s main objective is to put power back into the hands of women living in the developing world.

our primary targets for kinosol are subsistence farmers. currently, women in developing countries perform 80% of the agriculture work, yet they control less than 2% of the land

today, in the peripheral countries, women are less likely than men to own land, use credit or other financial services, or receive education or extension advice. in some cases, women do not even control the use of their own time, yet evidence from africa, asia and latin america consistently shows that families benefit when women have greater status and power within the household.

these are facts we no longer choose to accept as an adequate future. as a woman in the united states, we hear of the disadvantaged life women lead around the world and we think how fortunate we are to possess our luxuries. my three-team members and myself realized that we have the resources to affect change and help empower these women rather than pitying them.

it is a less commonly known fact that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent. this would reduce our world hunger by 100-150 million people. when women have additional income, they take that money and reinvest it back into their household. this inevitably puts food on the table and money reinvested in education for the children.

one goal of the kinosol team is to break down the gender barriers in these regions, and empower local women to subsequently boost the overall economy and standard of living, while helping to decrease post harvest losses.  

we created the kinosol unit as a tool for women to reduce their waste and increase their family’s nutrient consumption. excess dehydrated produce can be sold at market, allowing women to make an income for her family, which has been shown to dramatically increase her power in the household. during times of low food supply, dehydrated food can be consumed as it has a shelf life of six months. this will reduce the malnutrition prevalence in households who own our product.

our primary goal is multifaceted as we wish to see a significant reduction in post harvest loss while also an increased income for the families. with kinosol we are confident we can tackle some of the most prevalent burdens of the developing world, one woman at a time.

fluctuations in the npgo are driven by the same fundamental processes that control salinity and nutrient concentrations. in the california current system, the npgo particularly reflects changes in the winds that cause coastal upwelling, the process by which subsurface cold water that is rich in nutrients is brought up to the surface. these results strongly support the use of the npgo as the primary indicator of upwelling strength and nutrient fluxes, and, therefore, the potential for ecosystem change in the california current system region. changes in nutrient fluxes drive fluctuations in modeled chlorophyll concentration—an indicator of phytoplankton concentration—that are highly correlated to observed chlorophyll. the model simulations support the hypothesis that variations in phytoplankton biomass in the california current system region are primarily driven by changes in wind-driven upwelling correlated with the npgo. the npgo thus provides a strong indicator of changes in the mechanisms driving oceanic ecosystem dynamics.

this “bottom-up” forcing is consistent with previous fish catch data and satellite-derived chlorophyll concentration, and underscores the need to better understand the influences of physically forced nutrient fluxes on higher food-chain levels in the ocean. the researchers have also shown that the npgo pattern extends beyond the north pacific and is part of a global mode of climate variability that is evident in global sea-level trends and sea surface temperature. the amplification of the npgo variability found in observations and in model simulations of global warming scenarios implies that the npgo may play an increasingly important role in forcing global-scale decadal changes in marine ecosystems.