The 'Winter Body' Season: Is your diet climate approriate?

So, what is 'climate appropriate' food?

Well, many people believe that we are much better at digesting and absorbing the nutrients from foods that are grown in a similar climate to the place where we live. That is not to say that these foods have to be native to this area: they just need to be from an area with a similar climate, so they can grow successfully.

We will be discussing this topic over the coming months, so we'd love to know what you think about it. Have you emigrated and found that the change in your diet has had an impact on your physical wellbeing? Are there certain exotic foods that you find don't agree with you?

The idea of food being 'climate appropriate' may all seem a bit far fetched, but if you think about it properly, it makes a lot of sense. Many years ago we weren't able to get food from other countries: we were limited to hunting and foraging in the area where we lived. It wasn't so long ago Europeans considered tomatoes to be poisonous, and many people only laid eyes on a banana for the first time shortly after the second world war.

Plants grow naturally in places with certain climates because they are designed perfectly for those conditions. With that in mind, does it not make logical sense that the animals living in that same area are designed to eat them? Of course we are not suggesting that eating foods grown in other climates are going to do you serious harm, but they may not be as beneficial to your health as locally sourced foods, or foods grown in similar climates to the one where you live.

Here are a few of the reasons why eating climate appropriate food is better for attaining optimum health:

• Strengthens our immunity; making us less prone to local disease

• Better for our digestion 

• Reduces the risk of developing food allergies

• Foods that have to travel long distances are often picked before they are ripe, to stop them becoming bruised and over ripe on their journey; so they often don't reach their full nutrition value

• Imported foods often require chemicals to keep them fresh: some of these toxins may be illegal in our own country, but because this information does not need to be provided, we’ll never know

Next time we're gonna think about occasions when not eating 'climate appropriately' has had a negative impact on people's health ...