00:00This is a head of red leaf lettuce
00:03that's been sitting in my fridge for five days.
00:05This is a red leaf lettuce that's been growing in my home.
00:08So how does lettuce go from looking like this,
00:14these beautiful textures and colors and shapes
00:17into something that's a little bit less exciting?
00:19And it has to do with our industrialized food system.
00:22The lettuce from the garden is a little bit smaller
00:30than the lettuce from the grocery store,
00:31looks pretty dehydrated and melty.
00:33The lettuce that I'm growing over here
00:35that still has roots and is still a live plant
00:38looks a lot more crunchy.
00:40But there's a bigger difference that you can't see.
00:42And that's the difference in taste,
00:44nutrition, biodiversity, and food waste.
00:47In the average time it takes to get from the farm
00:49to your table, an average head of lettuce
00:51can lose 30 to 90% of its vitamin C content.
00:54So the lettuce that you find at the grocery store
01:08most likely came from a really large field
01:11out in a very arid area of California or Arizona.
01:14Yield is king.
01:16Growing with a lot of fertilizer
01:17ensures the plant grows really fast.
01:20But by having the plant go really fast
01:22and getting an improved yield,
01:23a lot of times there's not enough time
01:25for the accumulation of beneficial compounds
01:28that are really good for your health.
01:30The good stuff, essentially,
01:31when it comes to the benefits of things like lettuce.
01:34So after being harvested in the field,
01:36after the plant is cut from its root system,
01:39it has no way to uptake water, essentially.
01:42So refrigeration is really important.
01:44Your grocery store lettuce takes a really long route
01:47on a refrigerated truck from a distribution center
01:50to your grocery store.
01:54Once your lettuce gets to the grocery store,
01:56it goes through more handling.
01:58Essentially, it has to be taken off trucks,
02:00put into coolers, shelved, stocked.
02:03And all that handling leads to more tissue damage.
02:07And the more tissue damage you have,
02:09the less antioxidants and beneficial nutrients
02:12that you'll have in your lettuce overall.
02:23♪♪
02:50We've all had the experience of finding
02:52that somewhat smushy bag of lettuce at the bottom of a fridge. By growing my own
02:57food, I'm saving a lot of plastic and I'm also saving a lot of food waste. All the
03:02plants that you see here, I can do multiple harvests on. That's a big
03:10difference.
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