Powerful truth: the “greenest” food choice you can make often has less to do with what you eat and more to do with how that food gets to your plate.
At first glance, the apple on your counter looks innocent enough. It is not polluting your kitchen, and by itself it seems completely harmless. But here’s where it gets controversial: that apple probably traveled through a long, resource-heavy journey before you ever brought it home.
Chances are, you did not pluck it straight from a tree in your backyard. Growing it required farmland, water, fertilizers, and energy. Machines may have been used to plant, harvest, and process it. It needed packaging so it wouldn’t be damaged in transit, trucks to haul it across regions or even countries, and refrigeration in warehouses, supermarkets, and sometimes in your home. Every step in that chain can release greenhouse gases that warm the planet.
This is why experts estimate that the global food system is responsible for around one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions that humans cause worldwide. That figure includes everything from farming and processing to transport, packaging, storage, and waste. And here’s the part most people miss: a huge portion of that impact comes from food that never even gets eaten.
In the United States, roughly a third of the food supply is lost or wasted before it reaches someone’s stomach. Some crops are never harvested because prices are too low or quality doesn’t meet standards. Food can spoil in storage or during transport. Supermarkets may reject perfectly edible items because they are the “wrong” shape, size, or color. This wasteful pattern has led many consumers to seek out alternatives that generate less waste, such as farmers markets, community-supported agriculture programs, or services that rescue produce that doesn’t fit supermarket beauty standards.
Julia Van Soelen Kim, a food systems adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension, points out that shoppers actually have a wide spectrum of options for how and where they buy food. The choices go far beyond just the big grocery chains. And during Thanksgiving week, when people often stock up for guests, these decisions matter even more. More food on the table usually means more emissions embedded in that food. If you are buying bigger quantities anyway, it becomes a powerful moment to rethink where those groceries come from.
Below are some ways to shrink your climate impact by expanding your shopping habits beyond the traditional supermarket.
The community supported agriculture box
For more than three decades, Jane Kolodinsky, professor emerita at the University of Vermont and director of research at Arrowleaf Consulting, has chosen a different path: she buys her fruits and vegetables directly from a local farmer. Her approach is called Community Supported Agriculture, commonly shortened to CSA.
Here’s how a typical CSA works: at the start of the growing season, members pay the farm a set fee upfront. In return, they receive a box of produce every week for the duration of the season. Some CSAs pre-select everything for you, while others allow you to customize part of your box. Certain programs even offer home delivery. Many regions maintain online directories or databases where you can search for nearby farms that run CSA programs, making it easier to find a share that fits your budget and lifestyle.
Because CSA produce is grown close to where it is consumed, it usually requires less processing and less elaborate packaging. According to Van Soelen Kim, this often translates into a smaller carbon footprint compared to food shipped through national or global distribution networks. Local food does not have to travel thousands of miles, so the fuel used for transportation—and the emissions that come with it—are typically lower.
Local farmers also tend to grow what thrives in the region’s climate and season. When food is in season, it usually spends less time in cold storage, which means less electricity is needed to keep it fresh. That can reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and your utility-related costs. As a bonus, seasonal produce is often more flavorful and, in many cases, cheaper because it is abundant.
Of course, CSA food is not magically pollution-free. Farmers still need land, water, and other inputs, and your box may still travel some distance from field to pick-up location or your home. But the CSA model bypasses many energy-intensive steps in the conventional food supply chain, such as multiple layers of distribution centers, extensive packaging, and long-haul shipping.
However, this approach does ask consumers to be more flexible. If you are used to keeping exactly the same grocery list all year—say, fresh berries in winter or tomatoes every month—CSAs can feel limiting at first. Van Soelen Kim suggests thinking in categories rather than specific items. For example, instead of insisting on the same fruit every week, you might decide, “We always want a firm hand-held fruit.” Over the year, that category might rotate from apples to pears, then to kiwis, and later to pluots or other seasonal options.
In colder climates, some people assume local food disappears completely in winter. That is not entirely true. You might see fewer fresh, leafy items, but local options often continue in the form of stored root vegetables, as well as dried, frozen, or canned produce that was processed when harvests were abundant. Learning to cook with these preserved foods can be a fun challenge and a way to eat more sustainably.
Here’s a slightly controversial angle: are consumers willing to give up year-round strawberries and out-of-season avocados in order to support local, seasonal CSAs? Or has convenience become such a priority that many people won’t make that trade-off?
The farmers market
Kolodinsky notes that one of the oldest and most familiar alternatives to supermarket shopping is the farmers market. These are usually organized events where multiple vendors set up stalls to sell directly to customers. Outside of formal market days, many growers also operate farm stands by the road or on their property, where shoppers can stop and buy produce without a scheduled market.
Farmers markets give shoppers more control over what goes into their bags compared with a standard CSA box. You can pick each tomato or bunch of greens yourself, talk to the farmer about how it was grown, and choose only what you know you will use. Like CSAs, these markets tend to emphasize seasonal produce and require less packaging and processing than typical grocery-store products.
Many farmers markets also work to be accessible to lower-income households by accepting electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards or other forms of government food assistance. Some even offer matching programs that stretch those benefits further when you buy fruits and vegetables. This makes fresh, local food a more realistic option for people who might otherwise feel priced out.
According to Timothy Woods, an agribusiness professor at the University of Kentucky, another big advantage of farmers markets and similar models is their impact on food waste. Customers are generally more relaxed about how produce looks. They do not expect every cucumber or carrot to be identical in size and shape, which means farmers can sell more of what they grow instead of discarding cosmetic “misfits.”
As Woods puts it, it does not bother many shoppers if one cucumber is a couple of inches longer than another. When people accept some visual variation, farmers can rely less on strict sorting, and fewer edible items are thrown away. Less waste means that the land, water, fertilizer, and labor invested in growing those crops are used more efficiently.
Other delivery services
For farmers who sell to large grocery chains, meeting cosmetic and size standards can be tough. Woods explains that there may be onions that never reach the required size, carrots that fork into two roots, or melons that are slightly too small for store requirements. These “imperfect” items are just as safe and tasty as their prettier counterparts, but they may not fit the visual brand image that supermarkets want to display. On top of that, farmers may occasionally end up with surplus harvests that exceed what retailers agreed to purchase.
Sometimes, nonprofit groups and volunteer organizations run “gleaning” programs that go into fields after the main harvest to collect perfectly good produce that would otherwise rot. For instance, a farm might leave undersized cantaloupes in the field because they don’t fit supermarket standards. A gleaning team can come in, gather those melons, and redirect them to food banks or other outlets where they will be eaten instead of wasted.
In recent years, several companies have built businesses around this idea of rescuing off-size or surplus food. Services like Misfits Market or Imperfect Produce specialize in delivering items that do not match typical supermarket appearance standards or that were overproduced. Their pitch is simple: save money, cut food waste, and still enjoy good-quality groceries.
However, there is still debate about how much these services reduce overall climate impact. Van Soelen Kim notes that although they definitely help reduce food waste, the produce may still be traveling long distances. Shipping a box of rescued vegetables across the country still uses fuel and produces emissions. The climate benefits depend on details like how efficiently deliveries are routed, how the produce would have been handled otherwise, and whether customers are replacing or just adding to their usual shopping.
Misfits Market, for example, updates its online grocery selection each week. Customers choose items to fill a box, often at a discount compared with regular retail prices. The groceries might include products with misprinted labels, unusual shapes, minor blemishes, or packaging changes. Orders are delivered either by the company’s own trucks or by third-party couriers such as FedEx.
Abhi Ramesh, the company’s founder and CEO, says they try to limit emissions by scheduling deliveries on specific days rather than offering instant, on-demand shipping. By concentrating many orders into a single route, one van can serve many households in a ZIP code at once. This “batched” model can cut down on the total number of trips compared with separate, individual journeys.
Ramesh openly acknowledges that in some cases a nearby farmers market or CSA may be even better at providing local, seasonal food with a smaller footprint. The catch is that in many parts of the country, those local options are seasonal. When harvest time ends, the markets close, and CSA boxes stop. During those months, even the “local” grocery store often relies on produce trucked in from major growing states like California.
The twist, Ramesh argues, is that his company can step in to move the portion of that supply that might otherwise be wasted. Instead of sending only pristine produce, they also transport items likely to be thrown out because of appearance or surplus. In his view, this shift can significantly reduce emissions tied to wasted food, even if the distance traveled is similar.
Woods’ core advice for using these kinds of delivery services is surprisingly similar to his guidance for other shopping channels:
- Eat seasonally whenever you can, so your food aligns with natural growing cycles.
- Prioritize local or regional products where possible to reduce transport distances.
- Choose items with minimal and recyclable packaging to cut down on waste.
Here is a final question to consider: in a world built for convenience and glossy supermarket displays, are consumers truly ready to embrace “ugly” vegetables, seasonal limits, and local-only habits for the sake of the climate? Or will supermarket-style expectations continue to drive waste and higher emissions? Share whether you agree, disagree, or have a different solution altogether—this is exactly the kind of debate that could shape the future of our food system.
