Eat your green: the 100 Mile Diet

When Canadian families get together in the coming weeks for holiday meals, much of the food they share will have traveled at least 1500 miles. This reliance on long-distance food damages rural economies and, with the huge quantities of fuel consumed and emissions spewed in transportation, contributes to global warming. In spring 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon began a simple experiment: to buy and eat food and drink from within 100 miles of their Vancouver home. Within weeks of their announcement on their blog at The Tyee, word of their 100 Mile Diet had spread around the world.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington environmental and social policy research group, a typical locally-grown meal - with meat, grain, fruits and vegetables - involves four to 17 times less petroleum consumption in transport than the same meal bought from the conventional food chain.

“We are spending far more energy to get food to the table than the energy we get from eating the food. A head of lettuce grown in the Salinas Valley of California and shipped nearly 3000 miles to Washington, D.C., requires about 36 times as much fossil fuel energy in transport as it provides in food energy when it arrives,” says Brian Halweil, author and Worldwatch research associate.

Smith and McKinnon’s 100 Mile Diet was no easy task. They consulted World War II-era cookbooks and bargained for sacred squash at a suburban Buddhist temple. But their experiment inspired more than a way of eating; it provoked consumers seeking to eat ethically and healthily to embrace locally grown food as an eco-friendly lifestyle choice.

A few Toronto chefs are committed to supporting local farmers – including Nathan Isberg of Queen Street West’s Coca and Czehoski. Mark Cutrara of Cowbell bistro was inspired by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma to create a local, sustainable approach to French cuisine. He serves grass-fed beef from Harrison Farms in Bradford, trout from Owen Sound and veggies from his pesticide-free rooftop garden. Celebrity chef and local food activist Jamie Kennedy plans to open a Slow Food restaurant in the Evergreen development at the Brick Works next year. (What’s Slow Food? Learn more here.)

The long-distance food system offers unparalleled choice. But next time you reach for a basket of strawberries in January at your local supermarket, consider the staggering amounts of fuel expended and greenhouse gases emitted in transporting the fruit to Toronto shelves. Remember that food produced locally is usually less complicated, tastes better and is more planet-friendly.