I just got finished reading Plenty (review forthcoming) which is the story of a couple who only ate local food (100 mile radius) for an entire year. This means Spring, Summer, Fall, & Winter. If they wanted bread . . . the flour had to come from 100 miles away or less. If they wanted salt . . . it had to come from 100 miles away or less. Their story and their challenges has inspired me in ways that I didn’t think were possible.
On average, each ingredient that we eat each day travels more than 1,500 miles. This is an insane number. A number only possible because of supermarkets, specialization, globalization, and the slow (government led) fading away of the local farm.
For the last 2 weeks I haven’t been able to eat anything without feeling sick or at least pausing to think about the absurdity of what I’m eating. From fast-food to microwavable frozen things to restaurants. It’s extremely challenging to think about this type of commitment. A commitment that I’m sure I’ll never come close to.
But I’ve at least begun to think about it and think about my eating habits in a whole new way. And as the future continues to force us into new ways of thinking about sustainability, I am realizing that this will seem less and less impossible and more and more a possibility.
Check out their website, 100MileDiet.org. Find your 100 mile radius. And check out the book.
My radius is both bigger and smaller than I thought.
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4 Comments
I did a mini review of this book a little while ago, not because I read it, but because I read the bullet points.
I believe, if one were to strictly follow this, one wouldn’t be able to have some sorts of food at all. Is that accurate?
Also eating at restraunts would be totally out of the question. Wouldn’t it? Though that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Have you found certain foods that you can’t eat because they are not in your radius?
Also are there foods that are from outside of this radius, that benefit people who do produce them. . . ie, sugar cane farmers or organic coffees and what not?
Well, at least you can chow on Mayfield ice cream and guzzle Mayfield milk, because they are very much in your radius.
Would this apply to tobacco too?
yes. you’d end up giving up some kinds of food because of the distance. but as they share in the book, you actually have more variety in taste, substance, color, and nutrition from relying on the local produce.
restaurants would be out of the question. but there is one where they live (british columbia) that created a 100 mile menu.
i’m still continuing to eat like i eat. i’m not doing the 100 mile radius. but i am finding myself more and more sickened by what i eat. chicken and milk for example. its tough for me to eat fast food chicken anymore realizing that there feet probably never hit the ground but that they live in cages their whole live. kind of sick when i bite into that sandwich now.
i was pretty stoked to see you were reading the book (josh) and the bullets (nick) as it was one of my favorites from this past year (partly because it’s local to me as i live on vancouver island – where they got their wheat).
in regard to restaraunts etc, i just wanted to share that the book’s influence is really showing here. more and more restaurants in the city are featuring localized menus and it seems the popularity of local farmers ‘markets has never been higher. we were actually stoked to find out that we couldn’t have guacamole with our nachos at one of our favorite pubs the other day because they couldn’t find a local source for avocados!
i could post on and on about how hil and i go to the point where we’re excited about not being able to “satisfy our every crave” and have transitioned to a more local diet ourselves in our grocery shopping, but it’s really as easy as “just doing it” whenever the opportunity is in front of us, and slowly changing our habits so that such opportunities are in front of us more often…
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[...] This two-mile neighborhood-living biking map thingy accompanies well the 100 mile diet. [...]