Seasonal Eating

In keeping with a rhythm that would have been very normal for most of our ancestors, I find that my food consumption has a very seasonal quality to it. I eat certain food items in excess for about a month or two and then move on to others. After a while, I always roll back to where I started.

I was a vegetarian last winter. I came off that experiment quite discouraged and indulged haphazardly in restaurant foods and other poor habits for a while. Then, the summer came and I was immersed in bushels of fresh vegetables out of our gardens. It was beets and summer squash at first, moving into green beans and corn and climaxing with tomatoes, onions and peppers. Beautiful root parsley opened the winter for us with lots and lots of soup.

When the last tomato of the season was eaten, I could barely look another one in the face. The fact that there were no pickin's at the store worth eating helped. I spent the early winter laden with my grass-fed, organic cow and naturally-raised pig. Just recently, I gradually moved into a diet centered around potatoes, beans and eggs. After several months, I finally had the taste for tomatoes again, but usually canned varieties to make chili and such. Yesterday, I had a salad, which really awakened a desire for summer vegetables, again. So here I have come full circle, with the early crops of snow peas, spinach and others already in the ground.

Variety is a hallmark of the ideal human diet. Given the natural growing seasons of most plants and considering migratory patterns of animals, our ancestors most likely ate seasonally, too. I imagine they gorged themselves on apples when they were in season for a month or two. Then it might have been a month of pears. Then berry season. After that, meat and stolen ostrich eggs could have been the mainstay until the apple season began again. I'm over simplifying, but you get the idea.

In forming a healthy diet, I hypothesize that eating certain items in excess for a period of time, and then moving on to others, mimics the seasonal growing patterns of most crops and is in keeping with a very natural rhythm. It is most likely built into our evolutionary make-up. I would venture to say that this is a good way to eat, as long as the items you are eating are quality ones. Besides, there are a lot of foods to eat with good nutrition. Limiting yourself to only certain items like tomatoes every single day would limit your body's exposure to other nutrients. Eating in spurts and then moving onto others is probably a good way to manage this intake.