I just ran into this for the first time this morning. The 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change is a diet that is more of an environmental movement.
The idea behind the 100 mile diet is this, you only eat food that was produced within 100 miles of your home.
This is a neat idea to think about and is probably very good for the environment as one of the real costs of food both at the supermarket and in our environment is transportation.
Each ingredient in our meals apparently travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to our plate. Although I know that it would be tough, especially depending on where you live this could be a great idea or kind of unworkable.
The people that started the 100 mile diet live in Vancouver, Vancouver is my hometown and is very close to farms, fishing and therefore most things that you would want to eat.
I now live in Calgary and here in Calgary we are 600 miles from an ocean although I can get rainbow trout from the local Bow River, there are farms very close and, of course, lots fo fresh water close by, but no fruit!
What happens though to someone in the middle of Los Angeles or in the middle of a desert, the problem for some people in these places is that there would be no quality food that is grown or produced as close.
In the end, I believe that the ideals behind the 100 mile diet are something that everyone should seriously look at.
Just because some produce from South America is cheaper than what is grown locally does not make it cheaper in the end, I talk about this on this blog very little but our environment is getting worse (I don’t really want to drag this into some pro or con environmental debate) and this seems to be one good first step to making things a bit better.
Interesting theory, but I don’t think it would work in all locations. I live in Las Vegas, and there isn’t a whole lot of food being produced within 100 miles. Plus, some foods just grow better in different climates, and I wouldn’t want to sacrifice the quality of foods I eat.
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