I’ve always wanted to be a part of local, sustainable eating. Preparing and eating foods that have been grown locally without the use of pesticides and other chemicals has been appealing to me for some time. However, I’ve never taken the step to incorporate it into my daily lifestyle. I’ve shopped at local farmers’ markets and bought organic foods at the grocery store, but I’ve never taken a bigger step. May of 2010 was the month in which I decided to take that big step. I purchased a share of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and also had a share donated to the Green Bay YMCA courtesy of Kellner Back Acre Garden in Denmark, Wisconsin. http://www.kellnerbackacregarden.com/about.html

Eating fruits and vegetables is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. But, in order to eat fruits and vegetables, a person needs to purchase them from a grocery store. The grocery store gets the fruits and veggies from a supplier who in turn purchased them from faraway places such as South America and Asian countries like China. The produce is grown in these countries (and our own country) with pesticides and chemicals to make the product grow fast, look the same (no misshapes, bruises, discoloring, etc), and be resistant to drought and extreme heat. This sounds like a good thing because it allows us to eat these “healthy” foods relatively inexpensively.

However, what we don’t thoroughly know is what these pesticides and chemicals do to our and our family’s health. It is also severely detrimental to our environment to transport produce grown thousands of miles away to our hometowns that can grown in our own backyards. These consequences are why shopping at farmers’ markets, organic grocery stores, and investing in CSAs is important to our health and our environment. I recommend that everyone try to incorporate sustainable foods into their daily lifestyles, even if it seems scary and out of reach.

I am scared and unsure of how well I will do spending my summer preparing local, sustainable foods that I have never even tasted before! But, I know this is an important step to take for the health of my life, my future, and my country’s future.

Laura Grovogel

Health and Fitness Coordinator

Greater Green Bay YMCA - East Side