Eating Close to Home

With the farmer’s market season almost upon us it seems like a fitting time to discuss eating local. Here is a very unsettling statistic – a typical ingredient in a modern meal has travelled 1,500 miles or more from farm to plate. Do you know where your food comes from? Is it local?  

Living on the 100 Mile Diet
On the first day of Spring in 2005, two very inspirational Vancouverites chose to reinvent how they ate through a seemingly simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia. I followed their blog and just finished reading their newly release book. There idea is so simple, radical, wonderful and inspirational all at once.  

“Eating locally isn’t just a fad like the various diets advertised on late-night TV–it may be one of the most important ways we save ourselves and the planet.” – Dr. David Suzuki, chair, The David Suzuki Foundation 

So could my family and I live on the 100 Mile Diet? We can live without Gala apples from New Zealand but can we live without bananas, coffee and olive oil? What about wheat, orange juice and my favourite Danish cream cheese? I think I could do it; however, we are going to take the approach of eating as close to home as possible – with a few exceptions/indulgences.  I purchase most of my groceries through SPUD where they calculate your total food miles with every order. Our milk comes from Avalon Dairy just a few miles away. Through the Spring and Summer I’m going to stock up on local produce and begin canning and preserving for Winter.