The 100 mile diet says that you eat things that were produced within 100 miles of you. You could interpret this in different ways. If you got really strick, you would need to know where the feed for your meat came from and the fertelizer for your veggies. If you were really loose about it, you could pretend that your columbian coffee beans were grown locally.
Now, why would I want to live on foods that were only produces within 100 miles of me? There are several reason, which I'll discuss here. I'll write some future articles about how to live on a 100 mile diet. Today, I'll just stick to reasons for it.
Reduce your Carbon Footprint
Did you know that when a kiwi is brought to the US from Argentina that the transporting tosses more carbon into the atmosphere than the kiwi weighs? The more local you buy, the less carbon is added to the air, so the less greenhouse effect.
Support Local Economy
When you buy local, you are supporting those locally to you. For some, this is more important that for others, but when you can go meet the person you are paying for your food, it can give you a warm feeling knowing who the money you pay for your produce will help to keep alive.
Reconnect with your food
When you buy local, you can often go and visit the farms the food are produced at. When you go to the farmers market to buy your food, you can talk with the farmers. It is a safe bet that if the farmers grow the food, they also eat it. If they eat it, they can tell you about it. You can get recipe ideas and hear stories about your food.
Know how it grows
Being able to look at the farm, talk with the farmers, and walk around your food as it grows, gives you the ability to know how your food grows. You can know what kinds of chemicals the farmers use, or don't use, on their plants. You may find that most of your smaller farms, who visit the farmers market, use farm less chemical sprays than the guys in the super market.
Increase Variety
At first you might think "wait, if I'm decreasing the space my food can be grown in, then I get less variety" and in some areas, you might be right. In most though, this is false. The supermarket carries the most common foods that sell quickly. When you go to the farmers market, you will get a larger variety. I once stopped to pick up some artichokes for my wife, and had to choose from 8 different artichoke sizes and varieties. In the supermarket, I had one option. Sometimes two, organic, or non-organic. You also might see purple tomatoes, blue potatoes, wapato, and many other foods your will find difficult to get in the supermarket.
Get to know the seasons
Food grows seasonally. Unless grown in a hothouse, tomatoes will not grow in the winter in most places. Peas will not be found in the heat of summer. When you buy local, you get to know more about the seasons and what foods grow when. This makes it more difficult to work with some recipes that may require foods that are not in season, but you can often find in season foods at a discount. When they are in season, and everyone has a glut of tomatoes, you can get them cheaper.
Eat fresher foods
This is a huge reason for a local diet. Fresher foods taste better. The foods at your farmers market are often picked that same morning. Sometimes the night before. The foods at your supermarket have to be transported and might take a week from farm to shelf.
More information
For more information, visit the 100 Mile Diet site. You can also visit Local Harvest, founded by Guillermo Payet, to find local food resources that are close to you.
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