index > Today's Earth, Our Future > 6. We love food > The Fantastic Connection of Land, Food and Our Bodies

The Fantastic Connection of Land, Food and Our Bodies

In the past, Japanese farmers had farmland in the front of their homes, where they grew most of the vegetables that were eaten by the people in those days. Behind their homes, they would grow rice in paddy fields (fields that are flooded with water to keep the soil moist). While most people had to buy meat and fish, they got most of their other food by exchanging or trading with friends and neighbors. In this way, most food was gotten without the need to buy it.

But after this time, as Japan grew richer, the people there began to eat food from various parts of the country along with their locally grown food. Now--as in most parts of the world--food comes to us from all around the globe.

That means a lot of food must be traveling all over that place, doesn't it? So, while in the past, food was eaten in the villages and towns where they were produced, now they're delivered to places far from their origin. For example, vegetables are carried to places far from the farms where they were grown, and fish are taken to places far from the sea where they were caught, both to end up on the plates in our homes and restaurants. Some of them are even sent by plane!

Japan's self-sufficiency in food production (the ability to produce their own food without bringing it from other countries) was almost 80 percent in 1960. But as the possibilities to transport food long distances grew, this number has become smaller. The same can also be said about most other countries. But do you think this global trend is good? Let's try to find out.

Did you know that food that's harvested (collected from the fields where it grows) from one region or country is different from the food harvested in other regions or countries? We all know that depending on the time of year, a farm can grow a variety of produce, right? In other words, both the location where a food is grown and the climate during various seasons are what make food different from one place to the next.

Tropical food and summer vegetables usually have nutrients that cool our bodies down when we eat them. Eating these foods can keep us from getting too hot. On the other hand, if we eat too many tropical fruits like bananas and pineapples, or, if we eat too many summer vegetables like tomatoes or cucumbers in winter, our health may weaken because these foods might cool our bodies too much! Humans have taken many years to adjust their health and body "rhythms" to certain places on the earth where their ancestors lived and to the cycle of the seasons in those places.

In the past, around the Meiji Era (1868 - 1912) in Japan, it was thought that people should eat seasonal food that was harvested within a 12-kilometer radius of their homes. This came from the idea that since our lives and health are dependent on food, and food is grown by the soil, our lives and health are connected directly to the soil. Even today, the phrase "produce local, consume local" is important, both for our health and for the local economy.

Every part of our bodies--even down to our nails and every single strand of hair--is made by what we eat. So, even though food is fun to eat, its main purpose is to give us nourishment, or nutrition to keep our bodies strong. Now it seems pretty clear that there's something more to eating than just whether a food tastes unique or delicious, right?

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