Sanitarium dietitian Eliza Baird shares her tips for eating seasonally, to help keep your health on track during the colder months with a vibrant range of high quality, nutrient packed plant foods.
By eating seasonally, you ensure you get the best quality and the best value fruits and vegetables for all your favourite hearty winter meals.
Fruits
Apples: Apples are the classic go-anywhere fresh snack, and when winter comes around there’s a wide range available to suit all tastes. They’re also delicious in classic comfort foods such as apple crumble, which you can make in tasty wholegrain varieties. Don’t worry about peeling apples when you use them in cooking; you’ll save some time and the skin gives your recipe a boost of fibre.
Oranges, lemons and limes: There aren’t many more refreshing things to eat than a fresh, juicy orange. When we think of oranges we often think of desserts, but they’re also great for bringing a burst of flavour to salads and savoury side dishes. The vitamin C they contain also helps with the absorption of iron from plant foods like spinach, so grab one for a sweet finish to your plant-based meal that also boosts your iron intake.
Vegetables
Those cold winter days are a great time for soup, so it’s good news that the best soup veggies are in season.
Carrots, pumpkin, leeks, turnips, sweet potato: These are all perfect in soups, either as the star of the recipe or as part of a delicious mixed vegetable variety. Soups can be a great way of making sure you’re getting your serves of healthy, high fibre veggies and fluid in at the same time during the winter cold and flu season.
Broccoli, silverbeet, spinach: Steamed broccoli with slivered almonds is a simple but delicious side dish, while leafy greens like silverbeet and spinach are tasty lightly steamed or sauteed with some fragrant garlic. Spinach and silverbeet are great sources of iron when eaten in a meal with a good source of vitamin C, while broccoli is high in fibre and a source of protein, making it filling while being low in kilojoules.
Carrots, turnips, parsnips, pumpkin broccoli, cauliflower: You can fill out casseroles, bolognese, curries and pies with these vegetables—all inexpensive, tasty and healthy ingredients that will help reach your five daily serves of vegetables without even thinking about it. By swapping in more vegetables for the meat traditionally used in these meals you can raise the fibre content and lower the kilojoule and saturated fat content, turning them into heart healthy winter warmers that can also help with weight management.
In many ways we’re lucky to have access to a wide variety of fruits and veggies all year around, but there’s a lot to be gained by eating seasonally. By knowing what to look out for, you can get the best quality produce at the cheapest prices. And by choosing seasonal produce, you can avoid getting stuck in a food rut.
Check out our Sanitarium Seasonal Eating Guide to see what’s in season now, learn nutrition facts and discover yummy, healthy recipes at sanitarium.com.
