FANDANGO Catering Offers Basic Guide to Sustainable Event Food

FANDANGO Catering offers as part of its "Fall Entertaining Ideas" blog series a free basic quick-and-easy guide to sustainable food for fall events (and beyond)--no download needed! Just bookmark, print, or save to a cyberspace file.

As people become more interested in sustainable food options, there is confusion over terms and meanings associated with the concept of sustainable food.

The three basic concepts you need to know are:

Organic--Certified organic is a category established by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Producers must follow USDA rules and are inspected to make sure they do so.Vegetables can't be grown with chemical pesticides or fertilizers, can't be fertilized with slewer sludge, and can't be genetically altered. Animals have to be fed organic feed, can't be treated with hormones or antibiotics, and must be allowed access to the outdoors. BUT organic food is often shipped from far away, so there's a tradeoff involved in terms of conserving resources.

Local and seasonal--This is not the same as certified organic, though many producers follow organic methods. Local means produced within a short distance (usually 50-200 miles radius) and seasonal means only produce that is naturally in season within that radius. If food isn't shipped from far away it conserves resources since less gasoline, etc. is used to transport the food.

Sustainable Food--This means growing foods or doing anything food related (such as buying/cooking food for an party, wedding, or event) under conditions to conserve natural resources as much as possible; if it is related to growing food it also means improving the soil quality without chemicals.

Organic food is rather expensive because the production methods are more expensive. If price is a consideration, local and seasonal is often less expensive than supermarket food at local farmers' and restaurant association wholesale/retail markets. Also, local and seasonal produce is often much larger than supermarket produce so you can buy less. We recently bought a bunch of spinach that was nearly three feet long and fed 20 people!

We invite you to check out a local farmers' or vegetable co-op or restaurant association wholesale/retail market for your next party or event and see if you don't enjoy the food more.

Warmly,

Kristina

Kristina Ríos de Lumbreras, Ph.D.
Partner, Director of Sales & Operations
FANDANGO Catering
(713) 522-0077
(281) 796-9841