Since the advent of humanity, the matter of nutrition is extremely valuable. You eat to live and you get pleasure from your meals. That’s essential. At the dawn of humanity, the meaning of food was clear and understandable. It prevents dying from starvation and it helps develop some physical features.

Times passed by and today, food is much more than a supplementary thing. You get pleasure from eating meals, and if these meals are delicious, you get more pleasure likewise you get more benefits from healthy meals than from junk food.

At once, multiple cooking trends are impacting the whole concept of eating. Thus, for a person tracking modern trends, it’s essential to eat:

  • Healthy food
  • Home-cooked or rustic food instead of fast food or comfort food
  • Seasonal products.

The last option is worth focusing on. Seasonal food is delicious and it is essential for classy consumption as eating seasonally is a long-time habit which was mitigated only a century ago.

Why Eating Seasonal Is Healthy

Since ancient times, mankind has eaten seasonally. And this is not only the optimal way to add nutrients to the diet, but also a tastier, cleaner and more environmentally friendly method.

Seasonal food means timely consumption of products after harvest in the local area. The definition of "local" varies, but it typically means products grown in your country or your immediate neighbors. However, locality can also be determined by proximity, because more and more shops and restaurants buy most of their products from the nearest producers, who may be several tens of kilometers from the establishment.

What’s so great about seasonal food you may ask?

Seasonal food meets your body’s needs. When you live in some areas with some featuring local products, it’s essential to eat products grown up in a similar area. That’s true because you got used to it and your metabolism, your gastrointestinal tract, and your social habits impact your eating habits. That’s why you can ensure that your local seasonal products are safer and more customary.

The main results of cooking local seasonal products are diverse:

  • Eating seasonally is natural. Our ancestors were bonded to their areas for thousands of years, and their health was adapted to local climate changes and local products.
  • Seasonal meals are always cheaper and more affordable for your budget.

At once, seasonal products are diverse and typically, in the Northern Hemisphere, they are easy to grow and gather. They are cheap and they are tasty. Why not cook them? Let’s go on with this!

Seasonal Products and HLS Ideas for Cooking Them

The key advantage of seasonal food is that we eat products collected at the time of ripening, which reaches our table quite quickly. This helps to optimize the concentration of certain micronutrients and phytonutrients contained in the product and has a positive effect on taste (because cereals, for example, were not specially selected and grown for long-term storage and transportability, which is valued more than taste or nutritional values).

The essence of cooking seasonal is to track the life cycle of various products and their manufacturing stages. Seasonality means variety and variety of foods means a variety of nutrients. It is this variety that can help protect us from the risk of excess or deficiency of nutrients and is the basis of what we call a "balanced diet". For example.

  • When you want to eat eggs, that’s essential to eat them when that’s a peak of chicken nesting.
  • When you want to eat green leaf vegetables it’s natural to eat them in spring and summer when their vegetation period starts.

Thus, let’s check when and why eat seasonal products and how to adapt your healthy eating habits to these principles.

Spring

Spring is the best time to apply your seasonal menu principles. That’s a time of overall growth and the advent of the maximum of greenery. The best products to cook in spring are as follows:

Green salad like lettuce, iceberg salad, mash salad, green sprouts, wild leek, leek, and lots of various greenery. At the end of spring, that’s time to add some early fruits and berries, as strawberry, raspberry, cherry, and merry berries are reaping at that time.

Summer

Summer is the season of the most diverse range of products. Fish, fresh vegetables, herbs, fruits, and root crops are essential for summer. That’s a time of ripe and delicious tomatoes, crispy cucumbers, sooty zucchini, and oozy peppers.

Autumn

Autumn is what makes people happy with the richness of tastes. Apples and pumpkins, sweet potatoes and beets, carrots and freshly grown pears and plums is what make autumn flavors so delicious and heart-warming.

Winter

It seems that winter is not a good season for crops. Yet, winter is the most favorable season for meat and fish meals, ripe late-autumn vegetables and yummy intense tastes. Winter is the season for rich spices, sauces and soups.

That’s what you can consider when planning your seasonal menu. You can enjoy the rich freshness of greenery in spring while cooking green salads and smoothies. You can enjoy fresh green soups or bowls with the freshest ground spinach, lettuce, or parsley. At the same time, you can develop the best summer menu with the ooziest ground farmers’ tomatoes and cucumbers, perfect corn, outstanding berries and fruits, and the best protein sources as in summer, both fish, chicken, and other poultry are in their prime.

Autumn vegetables are great for rich and warming tastes as well as meat sources which typically are available during the fall while in winter, your HLS menu can be shaped with root vegetables, apples, rich spices and some pastry.

Some Summaries

Choose seasonal vegetables and fruits that were grown in your region. They are not prepared for long-term storage and transportation using dangerous chemicals. Their water and transport footprint is smaller. In season, they contain the maximum amount of vitamins, and macro- and microelements. What’s the most reasonable is that they are much tastier in season and that’s the most decisive factor to use them.