Seasonal Eating: A Forgotten Climate Skill
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Eating strawberries in January sounds harmless. But the carbon cost of that single bowl is larger than you think.
Dear IMPT Family,
There’s a reason your grandparents bought whatever was in season. It wasn’t tradition. It was necessity. Tomatoes grew in summer. Apples came in autumn. Carrots you’d harvested sat in root cellars through winter. The grocery store didn’t have a year-round supply of every fruit and vegetable from every corner of the world.
Then supermarkets solved that “problem.” Now you can buy a strawberry in December without thinking twice. Except thinking twice about it might be the single highest-leverage climate move in your kitchen. Not because strawberries are evil, but because the carbon footprint of a winter strawberry — flown from thousands of miles away or grown in a heated greenhouse — is astronomical compared to an apple bought in October.
🔥 Key Highlights 🔥
1️⃣ The carbon cost of eating “any fruit, any time”
2️⃣ Seasonal eating vs. local eating: they’re not the same thing
3️⃣ Why tomatoes in January are the climate offender, not the grocery store
4️⃣ The real cost of out-of-season produce
5️⃣ How to eat seasonally without complicated tracking
6️⃣ Where seasonal food overlaps with cheaper food (spoiler: almost always)
1️⃣ The Carbon Price of Availability
A tomato grown in a heated greenhouse in Northern Europe in February generates between 2 and 5 kg of CO₂ equivalent — just for that single tomato. A tomato grown outdoors in summer? Between 0.1 and 0.3 kg CO₂e. That’s a 15-fold difference, driven almost entirely by the energy needed to heat and light a greenhouse in winter.
Strawberries flown from Chile to London in June? Roughly 0.3 kg CO₂e per 200-gram punnet, mostly transport. Strawberries from a local farm in June? Under 0.05 kg CO₂e per punnet. The difference is real, consistent, and measurable.
This isn’t about shaming anyone for buying winter tomatoes. It’s about recognizing that the year-round abundance we take for granted has a climate cost. Understanding that cost is the first step to making a different choice without pretending you’re choosing poverty.
2️⃣ “Local” and “Seasonal” Aren’t Twins
Here’s a crucial distinction: eating local doesn’t always mean eating seasonally. A greenhouse tomato grown 5 km away is still a greenhouse tomato — it carries the carbon of heating and lighting. A tomato imported from 2,000 km away but grown in summer might have a lower footprint.
The lever isn’t geography alone. It’s whether the fruit or vegetable is fighting the climate to be available right now. Apples from New Zealand in Northern summer are fine — they’re grown outdoors and shipped by boat (low transport emissions). The same apples in Northern February? Still okay. Apples store well. Carrots in March? Excellent. They came from a root cellar, not a heated greenhouse.
The real climate wins come from foods that don’t need artificial climate control to exist in your season.
3️⃣ Why Tomatoes Became the Poster Child
Tomatoes are the classic example because they’re one of the few vegetables most people actually want to eat year-round, and they cannot be grown outdoors in winter in most developed countries. You either import them from a warmer region (transport emissions) or grow them in a heated greenhouse (energy emissions).
A kilogramme of hothouse tomatoes in winter uses roughly 1 kWh of energy. That’s about 0.2 kg CO₂e per kilogramme, just for heating. Add packing, transport, and you’re at 0.4–0.6 kg CO₂e per kilogramme. Summer tomatoes? 0.05–0.1 kg CO₂e per kilogramme.
The math is brutal. But it’s also easy to avoid. Buy tomatoes in season. Outside of season, accept that tomatoes aren’t available to you, or switch to preserved tomatoes (canned tomatoes carry a fraction of the footprint because they’re processed fresh and stored at room temperature).
4️⃣ The Cascade: Why It Matters for Everything
This logic applies to a wide range of produce: berries in winter, lettuce in certain off-seasons, asparagus outside of spring. Each one carries a hidden energy cost. Multiply that across a year of grocery shopping and the footprint compounds.
A family that eats mostly seasonal produce might have a food-footprint of 0.6–0.8 tonnes CO₂e per year. A family that eats whatever they want year-round might hit 1.2–1.5 tonnes for the same caloric intake — sometimes higher.
That’s not because they’re eating more food. It’s because they’re eating the same food using different energy to push it against the calendar.
5️⃣ The Practical Shortcut: Buy What’s Abundant
Here’s the non-overwhelming way to eat seasonally: buy what’s abundant. When strawberries are piled high at the market and cheap, that’s the signal that they grew outside, no greenhouse heating required. When tomatoes are $0.50 per kilogramme in August and $3 per kilogramme in February, the price is partly telling you the carbon truth.
Abundant = seasonal. Scarce and premium-priced = climate-intensive. Follow the market’s signal, not a seasonal calendar. It works.
6️⃣ The Hidden Upside
Here’s the part nobody talks about: eating seasonally is almost always cheaper. Seasonal produce doesn’t need to fight the climate — it just is. No greenhouse, no long-haul shipping, no energy spent on climate control. Cheaper to grow, cheaper to buy.
This is one of the rare moments where climate-positive choices and personal financial choices align. You’re not sacrificing for the planet. You’re winning on both fronts.
Looking Ahead — Eat the Season
Seasonal eating isn’t about deprivation or returning to some imagined past. It’s about recognizing that the carbon cost of abundance is real, measurable, and easy to avoid once you see it. Buy what’s in season where you are. The strawberries will come back next June.
Let’s keep building — together. 🌍💚
