New Jersey: Best And Worst Cities To Eat Local Food

One of the fun things about traveling is checking out the best local food. After all, if you’re traveling across America, why eat at a place that has an identical location in your hometown? It’s much more fun and interesting to eat at a local establishment, particularly one that sources its food locally. A new study has found the best cities to eat locally. Lawnstarter.com compiled the list based on factors such as community-supported agriculture, farm stands and markets, bakeries, dairy farms, butcher shops, seafood markets, and others. They compared 200 of the largest cities in the U.S. and then gathered data on each factor from various sources.

Three New Jersey cities made the list: Jersey City, Newark, and Paterson. Higher on the list is Paterson with an overall rank of 29. Newark has an overall rank of 52 which is not too far off from Jersey City at 65.

If you love local food, you may want to consider a trip to Portland, Oregon. Overall, the state took first place with the best access to local food and the highest number of u-pick farms. Also, the study says that the city offers many farm stands, on-farm markets, and craft breweries per square mile.

Meanwhile, Mid-Atlantic cities, including Baltimore, Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington followed Portland, Oregon in spots 2, 3, and 4. These states have high access to and support for eating locally.

When it comes to the worst city for local food, Anchorage, Alaska was ranked last with an overall rank of 200. The study found that Anchorage had the fewest u-pick farms, a low score for local food access, and the convenience of finding local foods.

However, eight of the bottom 11 cities were in Texas. These cities include Laredo, Amarillo, El Paso, Lubbock, Brownsville, Killeen, and McAllen. This could be due to the study’s factoring in community-supported agriculture, u-pick farms in those areas, and lack of on-farm markets.

A new Consumer Reports study has ranked the riskiest foods. They analyzed data from the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Agriculture between 2017 and 2022. Their researchers focused on "widely consumed foods" that had recalls over a specific duration of time.

According to Consumers Reports, the CDC estimates that 48 million people each year fall ill from salmonella, listeria, E. coli, or other bacteria or viruses in food. They said most recover on their own after a few days. But about 130,000 people are hospitalized and 3,000 die from foodborne illnesses yearly.

Some of the foods that are ranked at the top of the list include bagged salads, poultry products, and deli meats. The top five are leafy greens, deli cheese and meat, ground beef, onions, and poultry. Bagged salads and other leafy greens ranked number one on the list. They found 50 different recalls linked to them since 2017. Also, it has the most caused deaths. Last on the list at number ten is flour. Unlike leafy greens, flour has had zero total deaths.

"We aren’t saying people need to avoid these foods entirely," says Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at CR, who led the analysis. "After all, these foods are all usually safe, and many of them are in fact important parts of a healthy diet." Ronholm continued to say in Consumers Report that the list underscores the "importance of following best food safety practices with all of your foods, including knowing how to track, and respond, to food recalls when they happen." Read the entire list, and learn how you can reduce your risk at Consumer Reports.