I haven't heard of the 100 mile diet. I like organic coconut milk too much to adhere to such a plan. I do love wild rice which at least is grown in my state, but jasmine rice is practically a staple. We usually do buy mostly locally grown food. Since we're members of a co-op we at least have the selections pre-screened.

100-mile dieting would be rather difficult here in Minnesota, with its very short growing period. Either you would have to put food by or live for several months on root vegetables.

That said, I do as althea does -- buy at the co-op, which vets some of the choices to avoid factory farms. I also try not to buy out-of-season. That means there are many tomato-based dishes served from July through September, but it's kind of fun to look forward to eating real local food -- IMHO it makes one more aware of the seasons and our connection to where food comes from.

I'm trying to do a local diet, but it's tough. While the food quality is excellent, I'm getting kind of sick of apples! I'm dearly looking forward to summer this year and eating chicken and fruit again. I have always enjoyed eating seasonally, but limiting it to seasonally HERE really cuts down on the options (no oranges!!)

On the plus side, the food tastes great and it's forcing me to eat a lot more healthfully as processed foods are pretty much out of the question. I feel good too - not sure it it's the warm fuzzies or the food, but I feel great!

rocket_girl, what about canned fruit and frozen vegetables? They may not necessarily be local, but limiting yourself to a small subset of foods is not necessarily nutritionally-sound. They also are available in organic if that's important to you.

Or you can learn to can/freeze/dry local food when it's in season.

Oh, I wouldn't say I'm limiting to a non-nutritionally sound level, it's just tough to forgo some things that you've grown accustomed to. What I'm eating regularly right now are potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beets, kale/chard, squash, dried beans, apples, pears, local dairy, seafood, grass fed beef and pork. I'm eating bread from the local bakery and drinking coffee from the local roaster although in some respects I guess that's cheating a little bit. Still, it's a guideline, not a rule.

I miss orange juice, but I've got apple juice.

I'm expanding my garden so I can grow and preserve some items that are harder to find locally - for example, I love figs and they grow decently here, but not well enough to be commercially farmed. So the fig tree should be arriving soon.

I like the idea, but there are things I'm not ready to give up, at least not yet. Citrus, for example, and lemon juice on my salads (perhaps this is why vinegar was invented?). But it's an extremely worthwhile guideline to carry in one's head. I also try to buy only in season, and only produce in Italy, and as close to home as possible, though oranges from Sicily have a long journey to get here. As Steve O points out, some places would be a lot harder than others, cold climates versus warm ones. N.b., produce in Italy is much more seasonal than it is in the U.S. Also, agricultural history goes much further back here than it does in the U.S., and there's considerable interest in antique fruit and vegetable varieties and kinds that have fallen out of general use. These unusual foods that have disappeared from the commercial farms and orchards can be used to vary a diet, adding medlars and nettles to the apples and spinach we all eat. Traditional recipes reflect traditionally available foods.

Melissa

there's considerable interest in antique fruit and vegetable varieties and kinds that have fallen out of general use.

Thankfully, this trend is catching on (though slowly) here in Minnesota. The farmer's markets and the better grocery stores and co-ops routinely stock heirloom apples, tomatoes, and potatoes. At the local farmer's market -- all food sold must be produced within 50 miles of the market :-) -- I've seen heirloom apples, melons, and potatoes as well as some older carrot and native-plant cultivars. The ethnic farmers (largely Hmong) sell unusual greens such as amaranth, Malabar spinach, lacinato kale, and jute leaves, as well as something called "chicken seasoning" which is a variety of herby-looking greens for which I have not yet gotten English descriptions.

I really miss the Farmer's Market now ... :-(

Sounds like permaculture.

Yes, permaculture, sustainable gardening/eating/consuming.....all good stuff.

Coffee is another difficult one for me and many others to give up, won't be doing that anytime soon. Trying to buy fair trade to support the producer, and shade grown to help support the natural system (migratory song birds, etc) that occured there before the coffee plantation is a worthy goal, though.

I've followed the seasonal diet pattern for some time, altho like most of you, there's some deviation .... the one thing I miss most this time of year is good vine ripened tomatoes, fresh out of the backyard ... and currently my major offending item is dark chocolate :) but I do buy it in 5 kilo slabs to reduce the freight and packaging impact!

I've long felt that the human body is best adapted to a seasonal diet, and it's simply our modern consumer culture that says we "need" those out of season foods year round

Bill

Can't disagree about seasonal fruits and veges, never eat corn if its not picked the same day. There's nothing like tomatos from the garden and we are certainly a spoiled lot now that we can have asparagus year round (something else I only eat in its season).

However, people live longer, healthier lives with the variety of foods that are available in today's market. Our backs are straighter, muscle tone seems to last longer and there are a lot of active, strong 80+ers out there working, going to school, traveling around the world and enjoying great-grandchildren. And yes, I know there's a big problem with obesity and diabetes, but in general, we do live lots longer than our agricultural ancesters did.

Mimsic, I would argue that the 100 mile forces you into eating a *greater* variety of things, and furthermore, you get more nutrition from the things that you are eating because they are much fresher.

Variety from the produce section of your grocery store is really the same handful of fruits and vegtables over and over. I go to the supermarket and see the same things in the same places, seasonless, and the only thing that ever changes is how far it had to travel. There's the brocolli display and the lettuce shelf, and people think they are getting variety because they buy a little of each. Isn't it getting MORE variety to eat those stanbys in season and eat brussels sprouts, squash and baby kale NOW while the winter veggies are in season? When the baby kale is gone, my salads will move on to spring salads of pea greens and the first lettuce.

When I say I miss fruit, it's not because I'm not eating fruit, it's just that winter fruits are more limited compared to summer fruits. But I'm discovering that there are far more varieties and tastes of the familiar apple than the megamart offers. (Winesap was tasty last month, but the russet apples are really good here in January.)

I would say that the greatest challenge in eating locally is that it takes a lot of time. There's no 'one stop shopping anymore' - there's the farmer's market for veggies, the delivery service for meat, the bakery for bread (ok, I'm cheating a bit), the cider house down the road for alcohol (whee!), etc. And then there's the time spent cooking and preserving....

But it's all good, because what was I doing with that time anyway? Eating less interesting junk. Enjoying it less because I was eating the same things all the time. Spending that extra hour at a boring job when I could be cooking with my family.

I would also argue that during the last 20 years global agriculture has really kicked off, and that's when the trouble with diseases like diabetes and obesity have really taken off. The prevalence of childhood obesity today means there are going to be fewer 80 year-olds around later. Our current crop of octogenarians grew up eating something quite unlike what we eat today.

What's the gas milage like going to all those places to shop? And what does the meat delivery service drive? I can only imagine the line of SUV's waiting to park at the farmer's market, the bakery and the cider house. In Brooklyn I walk to the store and pick up produce either at my very well stocked and interesting supermarket or stop in at the green grocer. There are green markets from spring through til Thanksgiving in a nearby park. I don't own a car nor do any of my 3 grown kids. We all take public transportation, walk or bike to work and everywhere else we go. We have made some careful decisons about the materials we use, the clothes we wear and what we do with things when we're finished with them but we are also of the 21st century and try to be as easy going as possible. Its good to be conscious about the environment, but there's more to it than eating local produce.

mimsic - getting things different places doesn't have to mean driving long distance, or many trips, and is it any worse to have the meat delivered to your door from a local meat market that may be getting the meat from local producers, than having it delivered to your interesting supermarket, from upstate, or farther?

I'm sure there are others here that walk or bike to do their shopping, as well as many who make efficient use of their driving time by planning trips when multiple chores can be done on a circuit - I rarely drive to do one thing at a time, and there isn't any public transit to mention in my small rural based community

a large part of the "eating locally" [as much as possible] is that freight and the packaging necessary for that are the most wasteful parts of our "modern" lifestyle .... yes there's a lot more to environmental comciousness than eating local, but the environmental damage done by the industrial factory farming that supplies our major markets is a very major problem, especially in 3rd world countries

Bill

I would say that the greatest challenge in eating locally is that it takes a lot of time. There's no 'one stop shopping anymore' - there's the farmer's market for veggies, the delivery service for meat, the bakery for bread (ok, I'm cheating a bit), the cider house down the road for alcohol (whee!), etc.

rocket_girl, do you live near any food co-ops? Many welcome your shopping there even if you're not a member. I am a member of my co-op. It's an excellent place to get produce, meat, dairy, and bread from local growers. And even if the item is "imported" (e.g., coffee), generally the roasters are local (one even delivers via bicycle or biodiesel-powered van!). You'll have to "ignore" certain products there (like the bananas), but it's more of a one-stop shop for local food.

We have PCC near here, which is a local co-op that specializes in organic, and offers what they advertise as more local choices, but I find that they are sort of like the megamart - most of the 'local' is apples and seafood, which isn't exactly taking it any further than I could do without making a change. They are trying though.

Still, I justify the extra trips I have to do as part of the whole - and some of them will go away when the closer summer farmer's markets open (there is only one winter market in my area).

Consider the beef:
Local -
- Beef born, raised, butchered in local pature - 0 miles
- Beef goes to delivery service warehouse - 110 miles
- Delivery service to my door - 10 miles, although that's pooled with other customers in my city.

Net travel 120 miles

Regular beef -
- Beef born, raised to weight in Colorado - 0 miles
- Cow shipped to feedlot in Kansas - 450 miles
- Corn shipped to feedlot to feed cow - 200
- Butchered parts shipped to Seattle - 1730 miles
- My trip to supermarket and back - 2 miles

Net travel - 2382

The extra 30-40 miles I add for picking up ALL my food doesn't even bring me in the neighboorhood of gas usage for one ingredient!

If you can do it without having to make special trips, good on you! You really have no reason NOT to select local unless it's something you just can't get otherwise and which there is no replacement (coffee, chocolate, etc.)

I'm hoping that enough people start making local choices so that farmers can keep close to the cities, offer a better variety of crops and markets can carry a full array so that it becomes a 'one stop' trip.

Michael Pollan wrote a good article (linked below) publishised in the New York Times Magazine about the politics of food. He includes a good set of guidelines, many which are echoed in Schizac's opening post.

Here is a link that might be useful: unhappy meals

Regarding 100 mile gardening, the thought occurs to me that local plants are taking certain nutrients out of the soil- and thus composting local plants back in replaces exactly the nutrients that are being removed.
As far as getting soil additives from far away, one overlooked matter is that pH is frequently the most significant factor in availability of nutrients. Many nutrients become unavailable to plants in acid soil (I should know, here in this part of Alaska the soil averages 4.5 to 5.0!!!)
What this means is that adding a great deal of humous and compost will help to buffer pH imbalances, plus one may wish to add materials to directly change the pH. The elements you need to grow a given plant may already be in your soil, but unavailable due to incorrect pH range.

Local area materials may actually be the most economical for many reasons, one of them certainly being truck fuel. I can get seaweed and peated seaweed for free, paying just the cost of fuel. Our local fisheries waste is processed into both (fish)bone meal and (fish)blood meal, and is sold for about $16 for 70 pounds locally! Wow, what a deal! Some years we can get crab shell meal, which is both a fertilizer and deters slugs by cutting their little slimy bodies and because crab shells have a bacteria that infects and kills slugs.
We don't have a lot of grass or hay lands, so I often use shredded office paper (carbon ink) for compost "browns".

In other places I have lived, local municipalities composted yard wastes and gave away compost. One town vacuumed up maple leaves and made huge piles, which turned into: leaf mold, gold for the garden. Look around, see what you can find.

A big hurrah for all you locavores (local eaters)also.

I'm with Seraphima on using local resources for farming/gardening. My husband and I are developing a large ornamental garden, and one of my guidelines is developing it in an environmentally responsible way. This means plants that are adapted to the soil and to the rain patterns, and locally available soil amendments. Here we use hay, tons of it as the ground is poor. We buy it from our neighbor who brings it from two miles up the road on her tractor. Eventually I think we'll be using less mulch and have more of a self-sustaining system, once the ground has been built up and the plants are producing their own mulch. When I lived in Olympia, Wash., I bought yards and yards of chipped wood, from local mills and from tree services. That was great, too.

Melissa

I have read that city dwellers are actually much "greener" than urbanites because they live more densely and use fewer resources per person/area.
I try to buy organic first and local second. There aren't any local tea and/or coffee producers near me but the economies of scale means that it isn't bad to buy these products even if they are produced far away.
I think the 100 mile diet puts a greater burder on northern dwellers than those whose climate gives them fresh garden products for a longer season (i.e. California and Florida).
Even though I live in south Florida I know that my garden will stop producing during the hot, rainy months of June thru August so I'm making sauce from my tomato bounty and as soon as I get enough paste tomatoes I'll dehydrate them as sun-dried tomatoes (not enough sun now to do it outdoors).
I like the 100 mile idea but I'll be realistic and try to buy local as much as possible. There are too many other things to feel guilty about for me to give up tea, coffee, store-bought pasta, etc.
I think the greatest benefit is to raise people's awareness of where their food comes from and HOW it is produced. That's a good beginning.

It would also put quite a dent in the economic health of our garden states if everyone were to adopt the 100 mile diet. I wonder how many Washingtonians would be out of work if Northeasterners stopped buying apples grown in Washington.

Melissa's post reminded me of one of my favorite cookbooks, "Honey From a Weed". It has a great collection of unusual recipes from simple ingredients, including weeds, and is a fun one to read apart from the recipes. Using local weeds can become part of the 100-mile diet. :~) Here's a link to the Amazon description of the book.

Here is a link that might be useful: honey from a weed

When you talk of being obliged to buy things produced in distant places I hear things like out of season fruits, coffee, tea. But, I'd invite you to look a little more closely at the packaging on items you may not even think of as being exotic in your locality. Hamburger from Argentina. Apples from Africa. Fruits you can grow in your own yard from Mexico. I live in a farming community and have a friend who owns an immense orchard who complains his local market for things like apples in season is being impacted by factory farms and stores who ship this stuff in when it's available under their own noses because it's a fraction of a penny cheaper per pound. IOW a much larger percentage of your grocery bill might be coming from places much farther away than you think!

I grow most of my own vegetables. Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, onions, leeks, shallots, carrots, corn, squash, beans. I have, over the years planted fruit and nut trees and brambles and berries. But, before I had those bought them by the bushel from local orchards and processed them. I can over four hundred quarts a year of my own produce and fruit. I make my own jelly and produce my own eggs. I make noodles when they are abundant and store them for use all year. I try to buy my meats from the local slaughterhouses. I'm not going to say it's easy, but it is economical, wonderful to have a year's supply on a shelf at your disposal, and I know it's not laced with corn sirups, preservatives and dyes. I made that life-style choice decades ago and just do it without thinking now.

You can eat a very balanced diet with all the necessary nutrition and have every bit of it produced locally if you are motivated enough. It's not boring either to have your diet change with the seasons. I find my winter fare is hardier and more caloric than the fresh summer fruits, and that's as it should be. Salads are replaced by slaws and applesauces I still have fresh and on-hand from a late fall picking.

And yes, those eighty and ninety year olds running around today were raised on diets we'd consider locally grown. My parents (and my mother is 91) thought things like a tangerine were something to be enjoyed as a rare treat when they were kids.

I don't find a thing wrong with buying the exotic and imported item when you really want it. But, I certainly don't find them necessities and I excuse my penchant for tea and rice because they comprise such a small percentage of my total grocery consumption.

I'm fortunate to live in California, where a wide variety of produce is available year round, and near a whole foods grocer that labels what is locally grown. I do eat a lot of brown rice - not even sure where that comes from. Tofu, too.

great thread - does anyone know of a site that will help you distinguish exactly what is in season when? (I suppose I should know, but I don't.)

does anyone know of a site that will help you distinguish exactly what is in season when?

Your local agricultural university or county extension should have helpful Web sites.

In response to some of the observations (above) that people
wouldn't really be happy with most of their fruits and vegetables being strictly seasonal (i.e.local):

No compromise necessary - this morning I had blueberries in
my pancakes (picked and frozen last July); my luncheon salad included fresh tomatoes (reconstituted in olive oil)
which we picked from the garden last October and dried; and
my late afternoon yogurt included a healthy dollop of
crushed raspberries (picked out back last September) which
had been frozen. . .

Yes, I still put things by, not so much to save money, but
because I like to stay as "local" as possible. Freezing most foods is an absolute snap (for those about to raise the "time-consuming" complaint!) - blueberries are poured
on sheet pans in a single layer to freeze and, when frozen,
dumped in gallon-size ziplock bags. Canning, which IS time-consuming, can still be a remarkably efficient way to
store larger quantities of food - my friends and I have
rethought the onerous part of the job by adding a bottle of
wine and spending a entire DAY together having one helluva
good time! We plan to take it one step further this sesaon
by buying a full share in a nearby CSA organic farm and
really seeing how much we can preserve.

But my favorite form of preserving has to be drying. . .
after my Dad passed on, I was digging through tons of his
old stuff and came across a simple dehydrator, one of his
proudest possessions from the 1960's (we thought he was
losing it!) I kept it, and this past Fall, when a neighbor
offered me nearly 5 gallons of extra plum tomatoes at season's end, I experimented with drying them. Have you
ever TRIED a dehydrated tomato (especially in February)?
The flavor is so intense, so deliciously welcome. . .and
it came from right across the street. . .

Like so many of these "life-style" changes that are suggested as we become more environmentally aware, the idea
of "putting food by" takes time to get used to and reconfigure into our "modern" lives - but for me, without
question, the positive rewards have been remarkable.

Fascinating, isn't it, how so many of these "new" ideas
are simply "old" ideas, rediscovered. . .

Fascinating, isn't it, how so many of these "new" ideas
are simply "old" ideas, rediscovered. . .

Somewhere in the back of my mind I like to entertain the idea that people, s l o w l y, are catching on to the notion that something that is "new" is not automatically better, and that sometimes our predecessors here had a clue about how to live well. Carl, you've already figured it out.

Thank you Carl. You are so right. I have a birthday coming up, and a dehydrator is going on the list.I'm planning to grow many Roma tomatoes, and this will be a wonderful way to preserve them, along with freezing as sauce, and freezing whole.

Our ancestors ate local because it was the only choice other than starvation. We will have to do so once again, eat (mostly) local or degrade the planet to the point of starvation.

On the tomato theme: I never understood the rational behind buying bushels of tomatoes when they are in season and then cooking them into sauce immediately. That's usually one of the hottest times of the year. Who wants to have the stove on then? Most people would just have to turn their AC up to keep up with all the heat from the stove. Not very energy efficient IMO.

As already mentioned, you can freeze whole tomatoes perfectly and then cook then into sauce during the winter when you want the extra heat in the house. I freeze bags and bags of Romas every year and just love making that sauce on a cold winter day.

Kevin

Air conditioner? I don't have one, and wouldn't use it if I did. I don't put mine in the freezer, because my freezer would not hold all the tomatoes I put by in one summer. We use a tremendous amount of canned tomatoes in addition to the large amount we eat fresh and I can mine right off the vine. Therefore, I can them right from the picking. We are also prone to power outages from an antiquated route left over from the original rural electrification. This has resulted in food loss more than once, and now the freezer is used primarily for short term storage, and preservation of staples like flours/rice/pastas especially to deter things like pantry moth. I can most of my bounty in summer for just that reason, including meats when I come by them cheaply or butcher out chickens. Having a pantry full of canned goods is very convenient, because basically they are already cooked. It is energy efficient to cook up meats in broth fourteen quarts at a time under pressure than crank up the stove and cook one quart of them at a time when you are wanting to make a meal.

I do not judge people who do freeze them, but I'm just saying what and how you do it is impacted by how many you need. Several hundred quarts of tomato products are not an option for me to freeze. I do most of my canning at night with the windows open, and oftentimes it's at season's end when the nights really are cool and the warmth isn't an issue. In fact canning gives off just enough warmth I don't kick on the heat.

Kevin, let me assure you that there are regions where summer day temps just nudge 70 and the nights are in the 40's. The heat from the sauce cooking feels good. Tom

Speaking of one hundred mile gardening, I suggest you really read the labels of food products you purchase in the market. Why? Why do we need to import something we grow ourselves in quantity? I grow garlic in my own garden, only I ran out of it. So I picked up a jar in the market and read the label only to find out it came all the way from China. Do we need to ship it six thousand miles over an ocean? I'd expect a specialty food to be imported, but a staple product just to save a few cents at the register or make some middle man a little richer?

Here's a by-product of locally produced food. I was in England when the foot and mouth epidemic broke out. It entailed massive quarantines over the entire country to prevent spread. The newspapers bluntly stated the obvious and that was in the days of local abbatoirs diseases could be contained more quickly and efficiently. When an outbreak of disease occured, the animals and meats or anyone at risk by eating said meat were geographically confined.

I've been concerned about how much food comes from China even before the melamine and fake-drug scares, and have become an inveterate label-reader. You have no idea how much fish (frozen or canned) comes from China. Given their track record, I'm very leery of purchasing Chinese foods.

The newspapers bluntly stated the obvious and that was in the days of local abbatoirs diseases could be contained more quickly and efficiently.

That, however, is still no guarantee -- look how many tons of ground beef are involved every time there's a recall from one of the big meat processors. :-(

There are tons, because of the vast area from which livestock is received. Healthy meat as well as suspect meat is all recalled. And suspect meat, especially burgers are mixed in with good and the whole lot is recalled. Local abbatoirs process local meats, and because of their size they don't run tons through on a daily basis. If/when a disease breaks out is is contained quickly and isn't shipped all over creation. Neither are the suspect livestock. They aren't raised in huge feedlots and then transported all over the country. It's local and keeps problems local. That's what I was getting at.

I saw the issue as "American producers vs. Chinese producers" and not "local vs. national/remote". Put the way you put it, though, I agree totally.