Most North Americans are unaware that when they sit down to eat, each and every ingredient has traveled at least 1,500 kms to get from the farm to their plate. This carbon emission intensive diet is what two Vancouver writers, James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, have dubbed ‘the SUV diet’.
With this statistic in mind, in 2005 MacKinnon and Smith decided to experiment by trying to eat more locally. For one year, ‘they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia’.
According to their book, the 100 Mile Diet, they ‘have gotten up-close-and-personal with issues ranging from the family-farm crisis to the environmental value of organic pears shipped across the globe. They've reconsidered vegetarianism and sunk their hands into community gardening. They've eaten a lot of potatoes’.
The 100 Mile Diet is full of humorous accounts of their challenges of eating locally for one year. Aside from their honestly and wit, their book is filled with a lot of practical local food-gathering and eating tips, like how to turn sea water into table salt and how to make an edible and delicious turnip sandwich. In addition to authoring an informative best-selling book, these two locavores have spawned an international food movement that has galvanized people around the globe to start buying and consuming local food.
For more information on the 100 Mile Diet Movement.
The 100 Mile Diet is available from Random House Canada.
Or order this book on Amazon.com 100 Mile Diet
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written by Annalee , November 18, 2009