Healthy, Diverse, and Heritage Foods Go Green (And Purple Too)

I never saw a purple carrot, and never hoped to see one. That is, until I ventured into my basket of groceries from our CSA one day and discovered a whole bunch of purple - a bunch of purple carrots, purple potatoes, and beets. Wait, some of the beets were yellow, and some of the carrots were a pale yellowish-white, too. Were my eyes deceiving me? No, these are the true colors of many vegetables, heritage varieties that our local farm grows.

For those who are trying to get healthy and incorporate more vegetables into the diet, a trip to the grocery store will often turn up the typical vegetables. Orange carrots, red apples, and green beans abound. What's sad is that this is changing the way that we view our produce. When we're confronted with vegetables that are other colors, like the fantastic spots of the dragon bean, we flee to the green bean section and bury our nose in its wonderful sameness.

It's this sameness that can cause farmers problems, though. For instance, the Royal Cavendish Banana is beloved of banana-eaters around the world. It has also been beloved of banana growers. It's large, and it stores well, and even when they are shipped green these bananas tend to ripen to a satisfying yellow sweetness. Many people don't realize that there are actually many, many other varieties of bananas. In fact, until the 1960s, store shelves were full of Gros Michel bananas. Then crops worldwide were decimated by disease, a disease that now threatens the universally-grown Royal Cavendish. In the face of disease, diversity is a blessing. And in the face of disease, our current banana monoculture could crumble once again.

Where I live, our local donations program for produce has run into the challenge of growing healthy food that doesn't promote genetic monocultures, while still appealing to those who might eat it. We love to grow heritage seeds, but many of these crops look different. They're different colors and sizes than supermarket produce, and people look on them with a bit of concern at the local food bank. As a culture, we've gotten used to seeing brown potatoes and green beans, and diversity in our food now makes us suspicious.

How can we encourage a healthy diversity of foods in our local stores? Well, for one, we can begin to frequent those who sell these products. We can visit farmers' markets and we can grow these crops ourselves, initiating children and neighbors into the delights of the purple carrot and the fanciful rainbow chard. We can ask restaurants that specialize in local produce to feature these vegetables in their meals. Diverse heritage crops are a delightful thing. They have a lovely variety of flavors and they bring a sense of fun to growing and eating healthy food. After all, what child wouldn't want to eat a striped tomato called Zebra? And what child wouldn't want to make the neatest soup on the planet: purple soup made out of purple carrots and purple potatoes? Heritage crops are slowly growing on us, but it's up to those who know them to help others love them too.