Relocalization: The 100-Mile Diet

[Guest guest]

100 Mile Diet spurs appetite for local food

B.C. couple become Web stars by eating only items grown within 160-km radius

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051018/BCDIET18

 

By DEBORAH JONES

 

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 Page A3

 

Special to The Globe and Mail

 

VANCOUVER -- Whenever they had visitors at their remote summer cabin in

northern British Columbia, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon wanted to be

good hosts and showcase the local area. They laid out a strictly local

feast: Dolly Varden trout, chanterelle mushrooms, potatoes from their

garden, boiled dandelion greens.

 

" It was delicious, " Ms. Smith recalls. " We thought, 'Why can't we eat

locally when we're at home in Vancouver?' We decided to make a whole

experiment out of it. "

 

The pair dubbed their idea the 100 Mile Diet and vowed, for one year, to

eat only foods grown within a 100-mile (160-kilometre) radius of their

Kitsilano home. And to hold themselves to it, they decided to go public

with their experiment.

 

The couple, both professional writers, have turned their dietary

experience into a diary published by The Tyee, a B.C. on-line magazine

at http://www.thetyee.ca, and their experiences have turned into an

Internet phenomenon of sorts.

 

Since the series began on June 28, about 100,000 people have logged on

to read about their culinary adventures. Next month, The Utne Reader

magazine will reprint part of the series. Gardening and organic

agricultural publications throughout North America have asked for

copyright permission. Ms. Smith and Mr. MacKinnon are in demand as

speakers to diverse organizations of food-lovers or environmentalists,

and the City of Vancouver has taken up their challenge, with a 100 Mile

Breakfast served to city councillors yesterday.

 

" People all over North America are contacting us, " says a bemused Ms.

Smith, explaining that she and Mr. MacKinnon started the 100 Mile Diet

as a deliberate lifestyle choice.

 

" I really like the idea of being in touch with the city around me, of

talking to my local farmers, being in touch with the growing seasons and

what's good to eat right now. " One delightful discovery, she says, was

local cantaloupes. " They're a thousand times more delicious than a

California cantaloupe! "

 

In their articles on The Tyee website, Ms. Smith, a freelance writer,

and Mr. MacKinnon, an author known as J. B. MacKinnon, offer tales of

making jam from local strawberries without sugar (honey works, but is

costly), and how, restricted to meals in which " every single ingredient

had to come from the earth in our magic 100-mile circle, " their wallets

shrivelled and their bodies shrank.

 

When they started their diet last March, without grains imported from

elsewhere for bread -- meaning no pasta, bread or rice -- and only

potatoes for starch, " we lost about 15 pounds in six weeks. "

 

Ms. Smith noted: " While I appreciated the beauty and creativity of

James's turnip sandwich, with big slabs of roasted turnip as the

'bread,' this innovation did little to stave off the constant hunger.

James's jeans hung down his butt like a skater boy. He told me I had no

butt left at all. "

 

Their bodies filled out again through the summer, when local food was

plentiful. Now with heavy winter rains setting in, the pair's series may

take on a winter chill.

 

Soon they will find out the answer to a question posed by Ms. Smith in

their first published piece: " But what . . . will we eat all winter? "

 

From coffee out of Colombia to garlic from China, urban Canadians enjoy

a cornucopia of foods from around the world. Canadian families spend, on

average, as little as 4 per cent of income on food, one of the world's

lowest food budgets.

 

But activists point out that this bounty comes at a cost to the

environment and food security, that the foods must be transported long

distances, and supply lines could be seriously disrupted by

environmental or man-made catastrophes, such as war or terrorism.

 

The popularity of the 100 Mile Diet " is an overnight success story

that's taken us three decades, " says Herb Barbolet, a Vancouver

researcher, community organizer and writer, who has spent decades

advocating local food production.

 

" They're blog celebrities, " said David Beers, publisher and founding

editor of The Tyee, who jumped at the chance to publish the diary.

 

Spring Gillard, a member of the City of Vancouver's Food Policy Council,

says the 100 Mile Diet " is something people can wrap their heads around.

If you look at the world's problems, you get overwhelmed and say, 'Why

even bother, because I don't know where to start.' But the idea of even

trying to have one meal as a 100 Mile Diet is accessible. "

 

Mr. Beers says Ms. Smith and Mr. MacKinnon make the subject of food

sustainability compelling reading for the general public because they

include their personal saga.

 

" It's a story of a couple trying something new and trying to get along

in the process. . . . There's a challenge every two weeks, and canning

corn almost breaks up their relationship. It's all in the telling.

 

" This could have been a self-righteous, didactic journey, but James and

Alisa are exceptional writers, " he said. " And they recognize that eating

well is part of the joy of life, that food has to be savoury and sensuous. "