Nutrition Educator - local, seasonal planning?

[HE]

In the thread entitled "Does Nutrition Educator also Discuss Nutritional Suplements?",
Marlina E posted with respect to the Nutrition Educator program: "Students learn to use local, seasonal, organic, unrefined foods as well as "booster foods" (flax, spirulina, bee pollen, brewer's yeast, etc) to assist people in increasing and refining their nutrient intake in their daily diet."
Does this mean a local diet specifically to CA, or is the idea to give the tools to the student so that they are able to plan based on their own location? I ask because I'm in the Canadian prairies, and of course, eating locally here would be quite different than eating locally in California. I'm specifically thinking of the distance program.
Thanks!

[Marlina E]

Thanks for you question.  Yes, the Eating for Health model is about identifying and choosing foods that are local to your area.  Your choices will be different based upon your geographical location.   Of course some areas have more limiting factors (climate, soil, latitude, etc), but the key is to try to tune into the nutrients that are available to you locally, both minimizing nutrient loss in transport, and also alleviating the environmental implications of large scale food transport.  Check out this forum post about a couple from Vancouver who developed the "100 Mile Diet":
http://www.baumancollege.org/forum/index.php?topic=1364.0

Of course, most likely you will need to supplement your local foods.  But the idea is to bring the focus more local.  You will learn to pinpoint local sources by identifying common sources for local foods and learning how to read labels and designations in order to determine source.