Food

Local food and the global supply chain

2007-05-21T06:00:00-06:00

Waking up listening to Weekend Edition Sunday is one of the best parts of the weekend. There are the features like the weekly puzzle with Will Short and there are some of the best stories on radio. This Sunday was no exception. A story talked about the possibility of finding locally grown foods and one couple's year-long experiment of eating a local diet. It started, as so many things do, as a necessity to put together a good meal from the locally available resources and turned into an exploration of the follies of the global food supply chain.

Recent stories about the pet food recall have pointed out some of the problems with getting food from the lowest bidder. Free marketeers will boldly proclaim that if we just leave the market alone it will correct the problem. Ultimately they are correct. The question is are we willing to pay the price? When the market is left to correct this situation on its own it will be a brutal correction. There won't be a simple soft landing and awareness of the need to change. Rather there will be a catastrophic failure of the supply chain and there will be thousands of people starving when the market makes the folly known.

One of the ironies of the situation is that the groups who should have so much in common in this area are more often at odds than in harmony. The vegans, the ranchers, the environmentalists and the homeland security lobbies should all be united in fighting this fight. Instead each spends time putting down the other group instead of looking deeper and seeing that there is more in common than there is that divides us. Unfortunately until the last acre is paved and the last pineapple delivered from a jumbo-jet we won't get together and then it may be too late.

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

2007-05-20T18:13:06-06:00

Like many great adventures, the 100-mile diet began with a memorable feast. Stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness with unexpected guests, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon turned to the land around them. They caught a trout, picked mushrooms, and mulled apples from an abandoned orchard with rose hips in wine. The meal was truly satisfying; every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks. The experience raised a question: Was it possible to eat this way in their everyday lives?Back in the city, they began to research the origins of the items that stocked the shelves of their local supermarket. They were shocked to discover that a typical ingredient in a North American meal travels roughly the distance between Boulder, Colorado, and New York City before it reaches the plate. Like so many people, Smith and MacKinnon were trying to live more lightly on the planet; meanwhile, their “SUV diet” was producing greenhouse gases and smog at an unparalleled rate. So they decided on an experiment: For one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home.It wouldn’t be easy. Stepping outside the industrial food system, Smith and MacKinnon found themselves relying on World War II–era cookbooks and maverick farmers who refused to play by the rules of a global economy. What began as a struggle slowly transformed into one of the deepest pleasures of their lives. For the first time they felt connected to the people and the places that sustain them.For Smith and MacKinnon, the 100-mile diet became a journey whose destination was, simply, home. From the satisfaction of pulling their own crop of garlic out of the earth to pitched battles over canning tomatoes, Plenty is about eating locally and thinking globally. The authors’ food-focused experiment questions globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattering threads of community. Thought-provoking and inspiring, Plenty offers more than a way of eating. In the end, it’s a new way of looking at the world.

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating

2007-05-20T18:10:38-06:00

The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment.When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born.The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep.The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere.Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie? —From The 100-Mile Diet

Good News for Pizza Lovers

2003-07-22T07:14:00-06:00

The New York Times has an article citing a study in Italy that finds eating pizza may help reduce one's risk of cancer. Meanwhile another source suggests a tuna sandwich a day may reduce the risk of Alzhimers's disease.