Protect the environment and more...
...with the following nutrition areas
Sustainable eating: seasonal, local, and without the guesswork
Eating sustainably rarely fails on willingness. It fails because the shelf does not tell you what is genuinely in season and what was flown halfway around the world. So every food here carries an environmental score, and 100+ of them also carry a stored season window.
The order is unsurprising and still useful. At the front sit hazelnut, walnut, rosehip and wild plants such as nettle and dandelion — they grow here and need neither heating nor transport. At the other end sits ruminant meat, beef and veal above all.
The gap between those two ends is wider than most people estimate. Between a plant-based local meal and the same weight of beef, the climate difference is not a third — it is a multiple. Which is why switching one or two meals a week does more than any sorting by packaging.
More in the environment: seasonal and regional eating area, which also covers food waste. If you would rather gather your own, see identifying edible wild herbs — a list with pictures, and the warnings that belong with it.
Frequently asked questions
What is sustainable eating?
Sustainable means what you eat should feed you without using up the basis it grows on. In numbers that comes down to three quantities — greenhouse gases, land use and water per kilogram of food.
The single largest lever is the share of animal products, followed by food waste. Transport and packaging matter less than most people assume — except for air freight and for vegetables from a heated greenhouse.
Why is seasonal food better for the environment?
Because it grows without extra energy. An outdoor tomato in August needs sun. The same tomato in February needs either a heated greenhouse or an aeroplane, and both weigh far more heavily in the balance than the drive from field to shop.
The second reason is taste: seasonal produce is picked ripe. That is why the app has a season filter — it shows what is actually growing here this month, rather than what happens to be on the shelf.
Is local food always more sustainable?
No, and it is worth being straight about it. Local beef has a considerably worse environmental balance than imported lentils. Local works when it comes together with seasonal and mostly plant-based — which is why we score all three separately.
What local does reliably deliver: shorter routes, more freshness, traceable origin, and value that stays in the region.
What are edible wild plants — and how do I avoid the poisonous lookalikes?
Dozens of foods in our database grow wild: nettle, dandelion, ribwort plantain, garlic mustard, orache, rosehip, wild berries and forest mushrooms. Many of them rank very highly with us — nutrient-dense, with almost no environmental cost.
And this is exactly where care is compulsory. Several edible wild plants have poisonous lookalikes. The best-known case is wild garlic, confused with lily of the valley and autumn crocus — both potentially fatal. Several entries in our database carry an explicit warning for that reason.
Never identify a wild plant from a photo on the internet, including ours. Use a field guide, go with somebody who knows the plants, and when in doubt leave it standing.
What is in season right now?
That depends on the month and on where it was grown, which is exactly why a printed seasonal calendar goes out of date so fast. 100+ foods here carry a stored season window with a start and an end month, and the filter in the app shows what is ripening around you this month.
A rough guide for Switzerland and its neighbours: spring belongs to young leaves and asparagus, summer to berries and fruiting vegetables, autumn to nuts, squashes, mushrooms and pome fruit, winter to storage vegetables and brassicas. Everything else on the shelf comes from cold storage, a greenhouse or a plane.
The Food Secrets app holds all 1000+ foods sorted by your goal, with the values behind every rank.
What can I do about food waste?
A third of the environmental impact of your diet comes from food that is never eaten. Most of that happens at home rather than in the shop — which is the good news, because that is where you can change it.
What helps most: shop to a plan rather than to a feeling, read the best-before date as an estimate rather than an expiry, and plan for leftovers instead of hoping. The shopping list in the app is built from your weekly plan, so too much never reaches the fridge in the first place.
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