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Anyone giving this any thought or actually doing it?

I am reading the book Plenty. This is the 100 mile diet. This is a Vancouver couple that decide to eat foods within a 100 radius for a year. They kind of cheat in the midst of winter by trying 100 mile diets in other parts of the world (Mexico, Southern US, etc.). I was hoping they would really deal with the winter from their stores of hand canned and frozen goods. Perhaps they'd go game hunting. :-} They live in the boonies and don't seem to have actual jobs that they go to. So I found the whole thing maddening.

I really wanted to like the whole idea and get more interested in it and I got kind of turned off by it due to their extreme stance. (Just maybe gives you an idea what people might think to turning off the a/c while driving. I don't know if this helps the cause any.) Anyway, they don't drink coffee anyway (Can I identify with these mythical people?? :-)) and one drinks hot chocolate and tea which they give up, no problem. (Can I identify with these mythical people??-)) They can't really eat any grains, including bread as no wheat or any other grain is grown in their area. And the only oil/fat is butter. Any spice is certainly out (all have been traded for centuries if not millenniums). And salt. (They eventually learn to make their own from seawater.) As well as citrus. They travel miles and miles in search of this and that, some of which sounds tasty enough, while other things and combos seem kind of peculiar. If everyone made these kinds of trips each day, week, month, I'm not sure we'd be better off in fuel economy!? (That is if they could or could afford to do it, which is dubious.)

So there's my review, I guess.

OTOH, I've started to think about it. I can't say I have done much. But lets say there is a choice between a New Zealand tomato and an Arizona one, I take the Arizona one and a home grown over the two. But I buy organic milk from Wild Oats rather than NM commercial dairy, as it lasts longer and tastes fresher. And if I can get local I will. We have farmers' markets and so on, but they mostly have limited hours. I get food that is Fair trade (like coffee, chocolate, vanilla, etc.). I'll buy Florida or Louisiana's sea food vs Vietnamese. But we are land locked. I'm guessing you could find a river somewhere to fish in, but I'm not going to do it.

Anyway, I wish I had gotten more enthused.
The website (www.100milediet.org) was a bit less extremist but not so helpful. There was no open public forum, but there was a map showing "your range". Mine does include viable farm land (in some months!), I could even get NM wine (sounds strange), though I don't drink wine. I could probably eat tons of pinon nuts, if they weren't so dang expensive.

Although it says you can simply declare your loved foods (like coffee) local (come again? Though it doesn't say anything about Fair Trade) and other pieces of moderation. (Trying a meal a day, a week, etc.) The website still waxes ecstatic of the pleasures of vinegar, sauerkraut, and buttermilk over those pesky lemons and limes. Come again? There is a blog and a place to donate money.


Rather more helpful is:

http://www.localharvest.org/

It isn't a real local food discussion, but more of a source and search engine for local products. You can put in your zip code and come up with a list of local products. You can select from restaurants, markets, co-ops, etc. The search seems to be less than 100 miles but I don't plan driving for a couple hours for some farm anyway. The forum is limited.

I'd be interested in anybody else's comments. I'd also be interested in better websites.


--des

my $.02 - our society is not set up properly to attempt to have a 100 mile food circle. To successfully only eat food that comes within 100 miles of your home you would almost have to grow a large portion of your food. With the exception of farmers, who grow all of our food, who's schedule really allows them time to grow enough veggies to live on (im not even going to touch the idea of raising meat)

If I didn't have to go to work I could write more (we discussed this topic in my organic farming class I took my senior year of college) even most of the crazy hippies thought this would hard/impossible while living in southern Illinois (they must not like corn and soy :) )

ok, so maybe that was my $.03 :p

i agree with ATL in that the way our society is laid out, it would be difficult. on a smaller scale, just doing one family at a time, those of us who live off the beaten path have a better time making some choices that are closer to the concept you are talking about.

we live on 26 acres, and have critters...geese, ducks, chickens, goats, sheep, couple horses, etc. i have raised some chickens strictly for eating, and never buy it or eggs at the store. we have also had meat goats that are in the freezer. i like the idea that i know what's put into what i am eating. we bought a cow once from a neighbor, rather than purchase meat in the store.

however, due to work schedules and things like that. it's impossible to completely live off our land. i think i live quite a bit differently than most people, in that we don't buy a ton of processed food, and never really come home with bags and bags of what passes for food today. i do my best, but time often limits how much we can do. i like my coffee in the morning, but during the week i am limited to what i can get from the machine at work...

i think it's a great concept, which just doesn't lend itself to all parts of the world. but more power to them if then can accomplish it.

i do try to avoid, however, some of the common eating habits of a lot of people....like lining up at a drive-in (while idling your car) and bringing home bags of crap to put in your kids. to me that's just increasing the health problems that are multiplyng in this country.....

ok, off my soap box......i guess in a lot of ways i march to a different drummer (or drive, as the case may be)

In the summertime it's not impossible to do, but not for everything.

After I noticed some frozen organic peas I got once were from China, I pretty much dismissed organic in favor of buying local. Or at least "closer". I'm in Virginia, but if I have a choice between Washington State or Chilean apples, I'll go with Washington. I also have the benefit of several farmers markets where I can get awesome produce from PA, MD, and DE, well withing a 100 mile radius.

P.s. The past couple weeks I pretty much overdosed on fresh local peaches. Peaches and tomatoes are two things that are NEVER any good from a supermarket compared to how they taste fresh & local.

I just saw Barbara Kingsolver with her new book "Animal Vegetable Miracle". She has a small farm and ended up doing a local experiment as well. While it was not practical or even possible for most people, her intentions seemed a little different. She also bought things like salt, CA olive oil, spices, and Fair Trade Coffee.

She mentioned things like doing one meal a month (the savings in oil would be considerable, if many people did this), using local farmer's markets, taking a single crop and freezing a bag of it, that kind of thing. Some of the ideas she discussed seemed doable.
I read reviews on Amazon, that had people thinking and changing some of their lifestyle and considerations. I'm not sure this is the definitive guide to actually changing in a major way but for doing a part is sounds good. I think I agree with several people here that the systems are set pretty much to be against doing it this way.

I also agree that it the whole total lifestyle shift isn't really that possible. Some people might manage it if they would basically spend their lives at it. But the choices that can be made seems like a good idea.

BTW, the comments re: China's "organic" has corrupted the name of organic with big players like Wal-Mart getting into the fray. We can't even trust the non-organic stuff they trade us with the rash of tainted pet foods, tainted toothpaste, lead in toys, bad tires, etc etc. My old neighborhood in Chicago (this might give Chicagoans some idea where I lived, was just about wiped of all trees almost overnight by a trade with China. Some sort of bug was carried on pallets with what seemed like sloppy practices.) Organics require a lot of commitment (and I'm sure there are many low income subsistence Chinese organic farmers), the thing is that we have no idea because we can't monitor them adequately. I doubt any of it is organic.

--des

I like the sentiment of eating locally, but I doubt that many Amercan's could have the varied diet they are accustomed to from local sources without requiring a lot more inputs to accomodate the soil and climate needs of different crops which in turn probably would be bad for the environment. I settle for (sort of) eating in season and trying to know who I buy from.

If you don't have the opportunity/inclination to garden yourself you may want to find a local producer at the community supported agriculture (CSA) page at the Local Harvest web site that Des linked to above. Typically you pay a fixed yearly amount (my sister-in-law charged $100 ten years ago, but it's more now) to get a weekly share of the produce off a local organic farm.

A friend of mine, I found out, is doing local, but nothing extreme. She eats the local produce in season, but said things like flour, olive oil, and coffee weren't local and she wasn't worried about it. She takes a balanced approach, this after reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". This definitely sounds like the more realistic book of the two.

--des