In the comments to that article on orange I was linked to this article

[conuly]

http://polkfl.blogspot.com/2011/01/florida-citrus-and-coyote-grove.html

LOL, some of those comments are hilarious. According to one of them, we have to accept GMO oranges because otherwise we will all die of scurvy in the winter, because where else could we possibly get vitamin C?

Gosh, I don't know, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, potatoes, liver? If we are going to agree that there is a "necessity" to either eat nonlocally or nonseasonably or both, then you can add to the list every other citrus fruit out there, hothouse tomatoes, strawberries, spinach... Actually, vitamin C is in an awful lot of things. That's why, as a species, we lost our ability to produce our own. Hey, there's an idea! Instead of genetically engineering the oranges, we can engineer ourselves to produce our own vitamin C again!

Lots of options out there for those people who don't want to eat oranges yet still don't want to die of scurvy.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Not to mention all the wild berries and greens. Wild roses grow in huge thickets and hedges here; come Autumn they'll be covered with rosehips big as cherries - enough for the whole town to drink rosehip tea every day without putting a dent in the supply. We've got no lack of dandelion, nettle, miner's lettuce, chickweed or blackberry leaf either.

Almost nobody in the US has a lack of dandelions, actually. They're high in vitamin C, they'll grow anywhere all on their own, and every part of them is edible and reasonably tasty. I don't know if this is still the case, but time was, the Europeans paid extra for grass seed with dandelion seed in it, because they ate the young leaves as Spring salad, made wine from the flowers and tincture from the roots. Nothing to stop people from doing the same now.

[conuly]

Yeah, scurvy is pretty much a risk only if you're living entirely off of hardtack and gruel, and even then it takes a while.

I mean, freaking potato chips have a decent amount of C in them! Nobody's diet in the US is that bad anymore, is it?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

A lot of things deplete vitamin C, though, so yeah, people who don't either eat real fruits and vegetables or take vitamins are probably deficient, even if not to the point of getting scurvy. One can't easily get too much of it, and it's cheap; there's no reason not to take it all the time. At my house we keep a bowl of the chewable 500 mgs. sitting out on the kitchen counter like candies, so it's easy to grab a few in passing.