Grown on Long Island Improve your health by buying food directly from your local farms

By Meghan Cohen

Have you ever thought about where your food comes from? Chances are, if you buy it from a grocery store, it comes from hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. If you want the freshest food possible, you need to look more locally.

On Long Island, Zilnicki Farms in Riverhead brings fresh food to people across the region, producing and selling potatoes, seasonal vegetables, herbs, cut flowers, potted plants, and beef.

John Zilnicki, a fourth-generation farmer who works on Zilnicki farms, explains, “Our thing is, we want to only have what is seasonal to our location to sell to our community members, which is a huge thing that spirals into our overall health.

We firmly believe that the more locally you can eat, the better you feel.”

While some of their produce is shipped up and down the East Coast and distributed wholesale, Zilnicki Farms also has a Community Supported Agriculture program, which brings food directly to consumers around Long Island.

Zilnicki Farms has partnered with other farms on Long Island to create food boxes that offer a wide variety of products. In addition to the items produced by Zilnicki Farms, the boxes can include bread, cheese, milk, honey, and various fruits that are produced on other local farms.

“The stuff that is coming in our boxes, in our CSA, if it’s on our farm, it’s literally being trucked one mile,” said Zilnicki. “If it’s coming from a neighboring farm, it might come five miles. Whereas lettuce, the average vegetable that you see in your store, throughout the year, the average is 1500 miles it’s been trucked.”

Zilnicki explained why he believes that local produce is better for people, saying, “There’s studies that have been done that have found that the produce that is living in the same environment that we’re living in has a higher nutritional and overall better benefits for our bodies.”

Additionally, he said, “A lot of the produce you see in the store has been genetically modified to look very appealing and beautiful in the stores,” explained Zilnicki. “So, as consumers, we’re visually attracted to that beautiful tomato, but it’s not going to have that nutritional value, whereas our heirloom tomatoes in the field might have a couple cracks and blemishes and may not be beautiful, but the taste is unmatched. The vitamins, the nutrients, the flavor, it’s not even comparable.”

So if you want the most nutritious, fresh, and flavorful food that you can get, you need to look to your local farms. Buying your food from Zilnicki Farms or other producers here on Long Island is one way that you can become healthier.