100-Mile Diet

The 100-Mile Diet is simple. It’s a living experiment in local eating that will reconnect you with your food, your local farmers, the seasons, and the landscape you live in.

After all the great talk yesterday about the benefits of local versus just organic, I thought today would be a good time to post some of the resources I’ve been collecting on eating locally.

Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon decided to try an experiment: they would eat nothing that was not grown within a 100 mile radius of their home in Vancouver. For a whole year.

From those humble beginnings, a grass roots movement has sprung. The creators have written a book and started a very cool website that looks to have lots of nice features once completed including a section on local resources.

While a strict 100 mile diet might not be for everyone (Do they grow sugar cane in your neck of the woods? Coffee? Chocolate?), the idea is sound, and the 100 Mile Diet website lists 13 reasons to eat locally––my favorite being, “A friend of ours has a theory that a night spent making jam–or in his case, perogies–with friends will always be better a time than the latest Hollywood blockbuster. We’re convinced.” (And the one about food and sex.)

Slow Food

Complimentary in nature, the Slow Food movement has been around for years, espousing simply good, clean, fair food. The movement has chapters all over the world linked through their extensive website. I found out that Slow Food Boulder holds events, hosts a foodie book club, and provides a list of local vendors who support the Slow Food agenda.

Other Resources

• FoodRoutes.org – Provides an interactive map to help find local foods, tools for farming advocates, the buy local challenge and more.
• Eat Local Challenge – A community of bloggers exploring the world of local eating and playing host to various local eating challenges.
• Seasonal Table – Offers information on eating seasonally, which goes hand in hand with eating locally.
• Eat the Seasons – Answers the question, “What’s good to eat this week?”
• Local Harvest – The be-all and end-all of local food resources.

If you have local food resources I haven’t mentioned, I’d love to hear about them!

This a great article about processed food from one of my new favorite websites/magazines, eatingwell.com:

“People are so used to foods lasting forever,” says Slavin. “I think from a consumer standpoint, for people to say, ‘Well, I don’t want processed foods,’ they’re going to have to learn how to cook, be willing to shop regularly, learn how to store foods. It’s going to be this huge paradigm shift before we can get away from the processing that everybody is used to. As long as convenience is such a leading force in people’s lives, processed foods have to be there. People expect it, they want it. Are they willing to put more time and more money into less-processed foods? It’s a big decision.”

Wow, I’m gone for a few days and the world of organics explodes into controversy over this Time Magazine article about the benefits of local versus organic foods:

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, “local” is the new “organic,” the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet.

Read the article? Have an opinion? Which is better, the organic apple trucked in from across the country, or the conventional apple grown in your own state?