Eat local, eat healthily

The world over, people are becoming increasingly concerned about where their food comes from. You may all have heard the buzzwords “Eat Local” and “Farm-to-Table” being bandied around, as people turn their backs on imported, pre-packaged and processed food for more organic, seasonal and local ingredients. Even in a small island nation like Antigua & Barbuda, where due to its sheer size and consequent lack of resources, it isn’t always easy to eat local, things are slowly changing. Certainly, travellers’ tastes are changing.

Thankfully, long gone are the days when the majority of tourists wanted to recreate the food of their home countries, albeit in the sunshine. Although, of course, there are still those who are too set in their ways to try the local nosh, according to a survey by booking.com, 35 percent of travellers today take vacations specifically to try the local cuisine. Not only does sampling native delicacies and meeting the locals in their own eateries provide an authentic cultural experience, but it also supports the local farmers, fishermen and communities. Numerous chefs across Antigua are ensuring that locally sourced ingredients are used whenever possible on their menus, primarily because they want to support local suppliers but also because their clientele now expects it. And with locally grown food having a smaller carbon footprint thanks to less fuel being used for transport, it additionally helps the environment.

This can only be seen as a positive for a somewhere like Antigua & Barbuda, which takes its eco-credentials very seriously. Unsurprisingly, for an island surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, there is an abundance of seafood and fish available year-round. The fertile soil provides nutrients for delicious fruit and vegetables and pastures allow the free-range farming of cows, sheep and poultry- although perhaps not enough to satisfy the whole population.

But Antigua’s local products include rather more unexpected ingredients such as honey, wild mushrooms and freshwater shrimp, as entrepreneurial citizens realise that this bountiful land can provide so much. Although it may seem like the farm-to-table idea is a relatively new concept in the twin islands and beyond, you only have to look a few generations back to see how communities historically sourced and consumed food. This was a time when people had no choice but to eat local, in-season food. If we all applied this philosophy - even just a little bit - to the way we buy and eat our food, there would be a more sustainable outlook for the future of food.

ISSUE 12 • DECEMBER 2021