Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

“It was the kind of meal that, when the plates were clean, led some to dark corners to sleep with the hushing of the wind, and others to drink mulled wine until our voices had climbed an octave and finally deepened, in the small hours, into whispers.” (pg. 3)

The 100-Mile Diet begins in a cottage with no light, fridge, car or hot water; the kind of place I dream of when too immersed in the hectic daily business of life. Most of us would starve out there, or so we believe. After an inspired meal gathered only from the wild, Alisa and James launched a year-long diet of food only found within 100 miles of their home. They found themselves returning from their cottage not starving, but with armfuls more food than they arrived with.

Why show more would anyone limit themselves to eating locally? How does that help anyone? Doesn’t it deprive third-world farmers and truckers of their livelihoods? There are a number of persuasive reasons. Local foods have fewer pesticides and more nutrition. Seasonal variety is good for developing immunity. Unprocessed foods represent a real solution to the obesity problem. Distant foods are only affordable through cheap oil, arguably enforced politically. Sparing the miles reduces the carbon emissions that cause global warming. And about those third-world farmers: when the 1994 free trade agreement was signed, subsidized corn from America overwhelmed Mexico’s two million small farmers and their 5000 varieties of corn. The collapse of a local industry due to economic deals (or a train derailment spilling ten thousand gallons of caustic soda into the river and killing half a million fish) is merely one disaster in a global economy in which we can always go elsewhere. In a local economy, we are reminded that such events are a catastrophe.

Works for me. But how does one go about eating locally? And can it be done without a “depression style diet of beets, cabbage and potatoes” (pg. 24)? Alisa and James started simply, eating seasonally from the farmer’s markets. It is not tough to find these in your area, e.g., Ontario. They sensibly used up supplies like salt that were already in their cupboards, but when they ran out they improvised, e.g., refining salt from the ocean. They used honey instead of sugar; I have got to get me some of that pumpkin honey. The great revelation from local eating is the immense variety of tastes that can be found. It reminds me of my half-dozen batches of home-brewing I did a couple years ago. I started with simple recipes but then discovered real flavour by adding freshly rolled grains and hops.

I went grocery shopping when I was reading their book. I read the source of each product on its label. Local apple juice replaced California grapefruit juice, and blueberries replaced my sultan raisins from Iran. I had no idea that carbonated water came all the way from Italy or Germany; dropped that. I have not replaced coffee yet but I am thinking about herbal tea. I am sure olive oil can be exchanged for a healthy local vegetable oil. And local vegetables frozen when fresh are always a good choice.

Turning over a local leaf can get quite philosophical. Their diet was not vegetarian, and this raised the question of whether the animals had been fed locally. They lived near the US border; should they break the law by taking local foods across it? Inevitably, you have to ask yourself if you are doing this because you believe the world is falling apart. When Alisa and James were shucking corn in their apartment they felt like part of some apocalyptic cult. While it is hard not to wonder at times if our fast global culture can sustain itself, I have to count myself with them among the non-believers. Instead, I see progress as something that is not always linear; sometimes we have to take a few steps back to pick up something we missed. A few weeks ago I read an objection to slow food on the grounds that women would likely have to do most of the work (see comments in this Metafilter post). Both Alisa and James worked hard, but James did most of the cooking. Perhaps we had to step away from slow food for awhile to advance women’s rights, but now may be a time to return to it for our health and that of the planet.

Alisa and James are journalists by trade but they sure know how to have fun with language; they “scuffed over to the farmer’s stand” (pg. 53) and ate strawberries “superlatively sun-sweetened to the brink of sweet booziness” (pg. 54). The edge in their relationship was of no more interest to me than it appeared to be to James as they alternated narration by chapter; I wondered if Alisa was simply missing some nutrient in her diet. I much preferred the drama of their quest for wheat: the disappointment at the ruined bag, the discovery that wheat had been grown locally in 1890, and Alisa’s delight when she declared, “I found a wheat farmer” (pg. 184). With a little effort, everything was possible.

http://johnmiedema.ca/2007/12/12/the-100-mile-diet-a-year-of-local-eating-by-ali... show less

One year, a couple was inspired to try to eat locally for a year. They defined locally based on their geographic surroundings and ended up drawing a boundary that allowed them to eat food withing 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, BC.

This book is the story of the challenges they faced and the lessons they learned. A year of trying to eat only locally grown and produced foods was difficult. Some of these difficulties were due to their geographic location; the area around Vancouver is just not fit for producing sugar or citrus. Other difficulties were more humorous; their 100 mile area included parts of northern Washington. They visited and found that the area produced a variety of wonderful foods, but then realized that they would be show more hampered by restrictions on taking food over the border (they decided it was worth the risk to smuggle home a wheel of cheese).

One of the most important lessons that the authors learned about food is that you can grow a lot more than you think in the climate of the Pacific Northwest. Our stereotypes about what can grow well are extremely warped by where things can be grown with the absolute highest yield. However, in reality most climates can support a much larger variety of food than they are known for, albeit at a smaller scale. Thus, even eating locally in Vancouver, BC, the authors were able to have a varied and interesting diet all year round (although it did take some preserving and finding wheat was a pain).

The other lesson the authors learned was to appreciate their food more. Spending a year eating locally caused Smith and Mackinnon to really think about the food they ate and helped them to appreciate the simple joys of fresh fruit or the first greens of the season. They learned, emotionally not just intellectually, that our food connects us to the earth and that holds true whether the food comes from your windowsill, a small farmer, or a giant farm.

The main thing I have taken from the book is to just think about my food, where it comes from, and what its production method may be denying me. I am not going to start only eating food that comes from within 100 miles, but I am going to take distance into account when given the choice. I am not going to stop buying lemons, but I am going to acknowledge that a strawberry shipped from California is less tasty than one picked fresh and ripe in Marysville. Mainly, I am going to acknowledge that our food production system is not without real social and environmental cost and try to take that cost into account when I am looking at price differences. show less

I really liked this book about a couple who decide not to eat anything unless it comes from within 100 miles from where they live. Granted they live in Vancouver, which makes it sound a lot easier to do than say, Chicago, but they do discover certain staples aren't attainable to them anymore, like wheat. Finding wheat in the Pacific Northwest becomes the ultimate Holy Grail. The experiment itself sounds a little pretentious, but the authors don't shy away from the downsides of local eating...they fight while canning tomatoes, lose too much weight from a lack of carbs, and drink a lot of wine from a local winery. In the end, their descriptions of delicious local produce makes me want to shop at farmer's markets a lot more.

Interesting he said/she said account of one Canadian couple's experiment to eat and drink only items grown/purchased/foraged within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver home for an entire year. An effective yet surprisingly entertaining illustration of the inadequacies of our modern globalized food system. The brief segment on "double disappearance" was especially powerful. Recommend!

I enjoyed this book. I was surprised at how much local food the authors were able to find, though it did take quite a lot of work. They even gathered salt from the ocean at one point.

There was a bit of interpersonal bickering in the book, which I found annoying. The bickering was not compelling, nor was anything related to the bickering resolved in the end. This detracted from an otherwise pleasant read. One star off because of that.

I wouldn't call anything that happened to these people "raucous," and they did try to hard to pull too many threads into one book (food politics! environmentalism! family history! cooking tips! relationship troubles!), but this was enjoyable. I am thinking about local food in a different way--that it's a cultural need as well as an environmental need--and I think that's a valuable takeaway.

This book made me want to be a better human: grow my own food, get to know my neighbourhood, support local businesses, be healthier. Although I haven't embraced the idea in my day-to-day life in any substantial way, I do pay more attention when I buy food, I think about it every time I shop, and I make better choices. The story got a bit boring towards the end, but by that time I had already gleaned all the good stuff. Worth reading for the learning value.