As Local Orbit’s Community Liaison, I started buying from the Frankfort Farmer’s Market through Local Orbit to understand firsthand what our customers experience. It helps to practice what I preach, right? Using our own tools has in fact helped us take our customer’s perspectives in developing this innovative approach to local food-buying.

Besides, at what other job is grocery shopping considered an acceptable use of your time?

But now that I’ve been using it for a few months, I’ve noticed how it’s changed the way I buy food.

Guaranteed Availability
There are a few items at the farmers market that have become favorites, things that are often sold out or missed when I’m not the very first one there (which would be never). By ordering online the sellers reserve it for me and, voila, no disappointments or surprises.

Saves Money
Since I shop at the grocery store midweek, I can shop from my local farmer’s market at the same time that I’m making my grocery list. The extra planning helps me stick to a budget while keeping our pantry filled for our family of five with as much local product as possible. No impulse spending!

More Variety
But what really surprised me is the variety that our vendors list online. Let’s face it: some vendors have better displays than others. Or meat and other perishables are packed in coolers and it’s hard to tell what’s available. But with Local Orbit, it’s all out there to see. And some vendors list online but don’t attend the market, so ordering online is the only way to get it in our area. That’s the way it is with my lettuce, and now I’m such a fan of his stuff that it’s painful to run out and buy anything else.

I still enjoy shopping at our farmer’s market and visiting with the vendors that have become friends over the last few months. I usually find one or two things that I didn’t buy online. And my kids love to spend a couple of their dollars getting snacks. I get to enjoy the farmers market and feel good about supporting my local economy, but collecting my food is much simpler – especially with three kids in tow.

Most farmers who work farmer’s markets and farms stands are proud of what they produce. And many want to tell just how they do it.

There’s the grass-fed beef farmer who firmly believes you don’t need to use grain to finish beef cattle. Or another farmer who collects stinging nettles with gloves to provide greens early in the season.

Then again I never returned to the farm stand where the farmer talked glowingly about the power of Roundup, a herbicide that’s toxic to wildlife. I understand that it makes his job easier, but today there are a multitude of great alternatives.

Be Curious and Polite

Best not to turn the questions for farmers into an interrogation. Show your curiosity. Slow down. Listen and learn. Chat as you shop. Other shoppers nearby might pick up a thing or two. If the market isn’t too crowded, start slowly.

1. “Beautiful day. So how’s the season been going for you this year?” Sometimes better to start with “is there anything here you’re particularly proud of? Anything unusual?”
2. “When did you pick this fruit or vegetable? Is it ready to eat today? How do I store it?” Chefs will tell you that berries picked after a heavy rain are worthless. This year’s peaches were particularly insipid for the same reason. Some items like winter squash can last for months if stored correctly.
3. “Are you able to use organic or sustainable principles on the farm?” It’s so easy to ask “is this organic” but the fact is many farmers do not have the time and in some cases the money for organic certification. That doesn’t mean they don’t follow those very same principles on the farm.
4. “Does this produce come from your farm?” Small farms can grow an amazing amount of food but it is unlikely that they will have fruit trees and kale growing on the same patch. But that’s okay if your farmer gets produce from growers they know. It’s very likely they can talk about their neighbors’ practices.
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I just discovered Jonah Lehrer’s neuroscience blog, The Frontal Cortex.  He has an interesting post on Grocery Shopping, in response to Mark Bittman’s recent New York Times article, Faster Slow Food.

Lehrer and Bittman explore the role of online technology in facilitating good food buying decisions.  They’re a great follow up to my earlier post on Ezekiel Emanuel’s thoughts about the challenges of changing the culture of how we eat, and its impact on health and health care.

Bittman writes about the potential of online grocery shopping to make it easier to eat healthier, with less environmental impact: This is my fantasy about virtual grocery shopping: that you could ask and be told the provenance and ingredients of any product you look at in your Web browser.

You could specify, for example, “wild, never-frozen seafood” or “organic, local broccoli.” You could also immortalize your preferences (“Never show me anything whose carbon footprint is bigger than that of my car”; “Show me no animals raised in cages”; “Don’t show me vegetables grown more than a thousand miles from my home”), along with any and all of your cooking quirks (“When I buy chicken, ask me if I want rosemary”). You would receive, if you wanted, an e-mail message when shipments of your favorite foods arrived at the store or went on sale; you could get recipe ideas, serving suggestions, shopping lists, nutritional information and cooking videos. If poor-quality food arrived — yellowing broccoli, stinky fish, whatever — you would receive store credit without any hassle.

Lehrer adds another benefit: I think the most important improvement triggered by online supermarket shopping would be a reduction in impulse purchases.

Summarizing Walter Mischel’s research on self-control in young children, he writes: ...there was one simple way to dramatically enhance the self-control of four-year olds: Instead of giving them an actual marshmallow, show them a picture of a marshmallow. Although the practical consequences were the same – if they picked up the picture, they could get a tasty treat right away – the presence of the photograph was much less alluring, a much “cooler” stimulus. The end result is that most kids didn’t have trouble resisting the reward.

When we shop in a supermarket in person, we are confronted with an endless supply of “hot” stimuli, the shelves full of temptations. Maybe it’s Haagan-Dazs ice cream, or all those different kinds of potato chips. Perhaps our weakness is dark chocolate or Snickers or sour gummy bears. The point is that everyone has a favorite food, and seeing that food right in front of us makes it much harder to delay gratification.

Like those four-year olds, however, we can ignore that pint of Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche when we’re only looking at a picture of it. The stimulus has been cooled off by the online shopping experience – it’s an abstraction, a mere image – which allows us to make more responsible shopping decisions. The same logic also applies to non-food impulse purchases, from cashmere sweaters to electronics. (This suggests that whenever we feel our self-control slipping away we should leave the store immediately and go shopping online. If we still want to buy the sweater on our computer, then maybe it really is a good deal.)

So here’s a research proposal: someone should do a carefully controlled study looking at how our online supermarket decisions differ from our in person supermarket decisions. I’d bet that we make healthier choices when those tasty snacks are just photographs, shrunken to fit our computer screen.

Provenance (aka the story behind the food), practical information (cooking, nutrition, reviews), convenience, economic impact (personal and community) and personalization. Both articles address some of the core thinking behind Local Orbit and I highly recommend them.

(thanks Kevin Ertell for the link pointing me to The Frontal Cortex)

I’m a big fan of Springwise, a site that spots intriguing business ideas (where else would I have learned about  Van Gogh is Bipolar a restaurant in Quezon City, Philippines?).

A recent post highlights an unexpected – and very cool – local food distribution model that offers convenience and direct farm-to-consumer sales.

In a world wrapped up in complex supply chains, small farmers are in a catch-22: sell to the supermarkets and get less cash for your carrots, or spend a lot more time and effort trying to sell directly to customers. Consumers, meanwhile, are torn between loyalty to local businesses and the convenience of those established supply chains. Now a German farm, Peter-und-Paul-Hof, has found a solution in the form of… vending machines. The result of a collaboration between the farm and vending manufacturer Stuewer, the specially designed Regiomat machines currently sell fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese, potatoes and sausage in thirteen German towns and communities.

It’s not a solution that sprung up overnight. Initially, Peter-und-Paul-Hof were operating a service delivering milk to their customers. Finding this too time-consuming, they began encouraging customers to collect the milk from fridges on their farm, which proved successful and inspired them to use vending machines as a more versatile solution. The Regiomat machines can be placed outdoors 365 days a year as long as they’re under a roof (some have even been placed alongside hiking trails in Switzerland), effectively giving locals a 24-hour farmers’ market and farmers a lot more free time. By cutting out the middleman, this system also offers potential savings over retail stores. An update to the traditional farm stand that is beneficial to both farmers and local-loving consumers, this is definitely a concept we can see spreading to other parts of the world.

What if a version of the Regiomat was installed in schools throughout the US – both for student snacks during the day and quick grocery shopping for parents and staff on their way home?

Following up on my last post, I ran across another resource in the quest for transparency.

What’s On My Food is searchable database that uses research from the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program to rank the toxicity of fruits and veggies (fresh, canned and frozen), meats, grains, dairy products and water. (via Bitten)

I’d love it if someone could turn this into a mobile tool for people faced with the choice of $8.99/lb for organic, local garlic vs. $2.99/lb for conventional, domestic garlic, as I was yesterday.  I chose the cheaper garlic because my budget is limited.  And while there’s no specific data on garlic in the database, I learned that onions, a similar crop, have extremely low amounts of pesticide residue, which made that choice a little easier.

Peaches and apples, on the other hand, are a different story.  Armed with data on the residues found in these fruits, it was an easy choice to buy the more expensive local, pesticide-free options.

As I’ve noted before, when we get cheap food, we aren’t necessarily paying for its true cost.  There are hidden costs to the environment, to individual health, and to local economies.  With an unlimited budget, I’d always choose the local, pesticide-free option.  Most of our food budgets, however, are limited.  Easy to use, data-driven tools can make it a little easier to spend wisely and eat well.

Post script on the price of garlic… read on

The best way to know your food you is to purchase it directly from the people who produce it.  The farmer who grew your salad or raised the chicken you’re roasting for dinner.  The artisan who made the cheese that’s going into the omelette you’re making with the eggs that came from the farmer who also grew the potatoes you’re going to eat on the side.

That’s why we created Local Orbit and our sellers are committed to our core standards.

However, we can’t always get to a farmers market (and Local Orbit isn’t widely available – yet!),  and there are plenty of foods you can’t buy locally.  The trick is figuring out, in the words of Good Guide’s Transparency Manifesto, three simple things everyone should know about their food but don’t: Where did it come from? How was it made? What’s in it?

As Collin Dunn writes in Treehugger, Labels on food items are as numerous as the aisles they’re sold in, and many proclaim that they’re helping you be healthy, helping the planet, or both. The truth is that there are myriad labels out there that aren’t worth the shiny sticker they’re printed on; certifications that promise to be “all-something” or “whatever-free” that aren’t under any government or third-party oversight, free to be molded and marketed by anyone who puts a product on a shelf.

You don’t have to put up with that, though. Here are seven certifications that’ll help guide you to green food enlightenment.

From Pringles to starfruit, you can learn about specific products on the Good Guide site – and you can use their mobile applications to help you at the grocery store.

For fish and seafood, the Environmental Defense Fund’s mobile seafood selector is really useful.  For fruits and veggies, check out the Environmental Working Group’s shoppers guide to pesticides.

The simplest guide to avoiding confusion: if you don’t know where it comes from, choose something else.