100-mile diet

[pegkerr]

My goodness, I'm really spamming LiveJournal today.

My new community discovery is daily_granola ("Finding your Inner Hippy One Day at a Time") where members post about trying to make one small lifestyle change each day in order to support the liberal agenda. One recent post mentioned the 100-Mile Diet. The idea is to draw a 100-mile radius around your home and eat only what you can get from that area. (A group doing this in San Francisco is trying a month-long Eat Local Challenge during the month of May).

If it were up to me, I would try this. But I have a family of extremely temperamental eaters, and I think it would be quite difficult for our family to do. Still, I'm intrigued. It would be interesting to do just one day of eating locally, and try to work up to a week. It is worth thinking about.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

I can see doing this in August, but not (say) February. There's a reason we get produce from California and Mexico and Chile and Argentina in February!

[naomikritzer]

I see that they're mocking people who buy strawberries in February.

I don't need strawberries in February, but I refuse to go all winter without ANY fresh vegetables or fruits. Which is what I would have to do if I actually ate locally year round. I would also never get to eat peaches, or any citrus fruits at all.

The "hundred-mile challenge" people are in SAN FRANCISCO, and note that if they can't eat locally, they'll at least stick with foods that came from California. Now THERE'S a challenge! ::laughs::

[rivka.livejournal.com]

The "hundred-mile challenge" people are in SAN FRANCISCO, and note that if they can't eat locally, they'll at least stick with foods that came from California. Now THERE'S a challenge! ::laughs::

Heh. No kidding. This would be pretty easy to do in the summer, but a real hardship in winter. There's only so many parsnips I can eat.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

But... February is strawberry season! (Down here, at least...)

My problem with the 100-mile radius is that our growing season's pretty well shot after May.

[naomikritzer]

Ah, of course. I lived in Texas when I was a toddler/preschooler, and one of my baby pictures has some comment about "Spring -- IN FEBRUARY!!!!!" written in next to it. (Then we moved to Wisconsin. And now I live in Minnesota, where we usually skip directly from winter to summer at some point in May.)

But yeah, this is the same point from the other direction. I think there is a tendency from some crunchier-than-thou types to get very moralistic about eating locally, but most of these people live in California. Where almost everything is grown nearly year round -- I know this because practically everything in my supermarket produce section came from California.

I do prefer to buy locally when I CAN because it's (a) cheaper and (b) better. (And it infuriates me that in late August, the tomatoes in the supermarket were shipped in from California and taste exactly as dreadful as they taste in February.) But winter access to produce that's brought in from other climates is, to me, one of the great wonders of the modern world. Up there with flush toilets and wikipedia. I don't know if I could stand to live in Minnesota if I didn't have access to produce from at least as far away as Missouri -- that's where my late-summer peaches come from.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Florida's seasons are more like "wet/hot" and "dry/cool" than the traditional four square. Our growing seasons are in the fall, winter, and spring. Oranges are a Dec/Jan crop, strawberries in Feb/March, watermelon in May/June, and after that it's too hot to keep much of anything alive (except the tropical stuff like mangoes, but that's limited to the extreme southern tip of the state).

I like to purchase locally, too -- there's nothing like a good, vine-ripened tomato that's still hot from the sun. But I also just like vegetables, and outside FL's growing season, it's import or nothing. Plus, I love fruits and vegetables that just don't thrive within 100 miles -- apples, pears, asparagus, and so on. I'm quite happy to bring those in from 100 miles or more away!

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

Peg, we're really lucky that our farmers markets have a requirement of only selling locally. St. Paul is open again, and Minneapolis opens either this weekend or next. I try to only eat local when I can, and the markets make this so much easier! I get just about everything there during the summer. (The Wedge isn't bad, but its expensive. *shrug* I prefer market days)

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

If I did that, I'd have to eat diseased fish, soybeans, and corn. Oh, well, Michigan produces apples. That should help. Obviously you can grow practically everything in Ohio, like carrots and lettuce and stuff, but most things aren't in season for months.

There's a bumper sticker I've seen: Buy Locally, Organically, and Free Trade. That's what we try to do. Obviously we can't buy apples locally in April; they're about six months out of season. We can, however, buy organic apples. Coffee isn't grown in the US, so we can't buy locally. We can buy organically and free traded, though. Et cetera and so forth. The concept of just buying locally isn't exactly practical, if you (as you say) are possessed of picky eaters, or people with allergies, or if you want a more varied diet of fruits and things like asparagus . . . I really don't know where asparagus is native to. Is it native to anywhere?

So. That's that.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

We have asparagus growing in our back yard, and I served it to the girls about a week ago.

And they refused to eat it.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

ACK!!! How can anyone refuse to eat asparagus?!?!? I would probably sell my soul for asparagus!

And rutabagas.

I'm happy that you can grow asparagus in MN, though. That means we should be able to grow it here, if I can ever get our garden ready.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I should think so. We grow it in Massachusetts. (Where, when I was a kid, I didn't like it much, either. I grew to like the tips OK, eventually.)

[naomikritzer]

I'd eat your asparagus!

But my kids would refuse to eat it, too.

[redbird]

That seems like a sensible balance. I am getting some local apples (stored in nitrogen) even at this time of year--the tradeoff between that and shipping from New Zealand isn't obvious, and I like supporting our local farmers.

(I mentioned liking your balance in my own comment to Peg; I just wanted to talk about apples here.)

[tigergladys.livejournal.com]

archmage45 and I are planning on doing something like this when we move in a month - and are without tempermentally-eating roommates! You might want to check out this website as well: http://www.localharvest.org/

[redbird]

Eating a lot of local stuff is good--shipped strawberries don't taste nearly as good as the local ones in season, and there's little reason for anyone living in New York State to buy apples from far away. Eating only local, well, it depends where you are. Even the Shakers, who were very big on self-sufficiency, made an exception for lemons.

I'm not giving up citrus or rice, and I don't think either is available from a producer within that distance of my home. I don't even know whether I could get wheat flour ground that locally--or does it count as okay if you buy bread from a local bakery, regardless of where they get their flour? (Modern life is complex.)

There is one count it one tea plantation in the 48 contiguous states, and it's not within a hundred miles of me. Nobody grows chocolate here either. I could do without chocolate, if I had to--I'm not dropping tea without consulting my physician, who I don't think would appreciate the idea of prescribing stimulants to replace it, or of me taking caffeine pills instead. Those wouldn't be from sources that close to home either, but maybe pills don't count.

I do like the person who mentioned "local, organic, and fair trade" as a goal.

[redbird]

Oh, and this should have been directly a comment to the original post, but I don't think it needs to be deleted and reposted for clarity.

100-mile diet?

[ascian.livejournal.com]

Sounds doable. Wal-Mart's only five miles away. >;)

Seriously, though, I don't think Louisiana has much in the way of agriculture. I believe I'd end up eating a lot of crawfish, seafood, and possum. XP

I'd love to hear about a 100-Mile Diet Day goes, though. Keep us posted. :D

The 100-Mile Diet

[aerden.livejournal.com]

*blink* Don't people do this, anyway? I mean, who drives more than 100 miles away from home, just to eat?

Good thing it's not a 1-Mile Diet, because in a 1-mile radius from my house, there's a Whataburger, Cue's Burgers, Lee's Burgers, Casa Ole, Poblano's, chili's, Schlotzky's Randall's, TCBY, Marble Slab, Luby's, Fu's Garden, and another Chinese restaurant. :P

Chantal

The 100-Mile Diet

[aerden.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see! It's local-grown food. Hm. I'm not sure how much agriculture there is within 100 miles of Houston. There's probably some, but I doubt it's a whole lot. So we're talking Farmers' Market here. Okay. That would work.

Chantal

Local Eating

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It's probably next to impossible to do in the U.S., I'll bet. But yes, it's way easier to do with easygoing eaters.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

This (in my opinion, which is not a humble opinion, but a fairly well-informed one) illustrates much the same problem I have with Alice (lives in Berkeley, CA) Waters' insistence on locally grown foods. Though she has been taken to task about it by people from less-benign climates, she still insists that every state in the union should be able to supply its needs for salad greens. Like to see how Minot, ND is going to handle that in February.

K. [although, contrariwise, I admit that she has ALSO influenced the choices everyone one of us makes, and even the demands we make on the marketplace, but on the yet-other hand, so has Frances Moore Lappe, and her daughter and so on]

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

There was noise about this -last summer- in the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Press, in connection with the price of gasoline. Gas prices -*Last* summer! and how it was going to affect the prices at the grocery, only less so there because of the fruit belt and local slaughterhouses. And the article was talking up the availabilty of foodstuffs within 50 miles.