Eat Locally aka Locavore

  • I'm curious if anyone has tried this? I set a 2008 goal for myself of eating locally for either one month or one week a month for four months. Of course, I'm choosing the summer months to start off.

    I'm just curious about how the experience went for someone trying to lose/maintain weight. The biggest issue in my area would be grains. While there are a lot of places where you can get whole grain breads made locally, I think the grains are "imported."

    Anyone?
  • I try to buy as much locally grown food as I can. This includes most of my produce, eggs, and fish. But there is a limit to how far I'm willing to drive to get locally grown food, so if it isn't available at my farmers' market, I probably don't buy it from a local source.

    Our local paper ran an article profiling a few couples that tried to eat locally for one week (How to Be a Locavore, SF Chronicle, April 18, 2007) and, well, it's really hard to do. Grains are one problem, but coffee, tea, and spices are also a problem (although at least we might be able to get salt locally here in the bay area--heck, I could practically just walk out to the bay and chip some off). And if you add calorie counting into the equation, it's even harder. The folks profiled in the paper all seemed to eat fairly high-calorie diets. Getting locally produced low-calorie cheese, for example, is pretty much impossible, at least here in the bay area. The Chronicle required couple profiled to stay within a specific $$ budget, but I would have been interested to see if they could have stayed within a calorie budget.

    It also depends on how you define local--is it 100 miles, 50 miles? My farmers market has stands selling produce grown in southern CA--that's not really local to Northern CA. But if you don't ask, you'd never realize you weren't buying locally grown produce. They're at the farmers' market, so you just assume they are local.
  • You should definitely check out Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral!
  • Ha! You beat me to it Glory! In AVM, she notes that even in the highly populated east coast, they had problems finding things like flour that were local. If I recall, they settled for fair trade items on things like coffee.

    Here in Alaska I would have a very limited diet if I were truly local! We do have an organic farm in our town, and DH and I grow a garden, so veggies I can do okay with. There is - off and on - a meat plant here, but I have no idea if the meat is locally grown. DH does fish for salmon, so I always have plenty of wild Alaska salmon in my freezer (ducking - stop throwing things). He doesn't hunt though, so if we get any moose or caribou, it's by trading or gift. We had a local dairy operator, but they closed last year. I can - and do - get locally produced (laid?) eggs. If I wanted I could get local cheese curds - ick!

    Really, to have a varied diet, esp in the winter, I rely on getting an every-other-week CSA box of organic fruits/veggies from Washington. It certainly supplements the frozen stuff from our garden. Although I like broccoli, cauliflower, peas and green beans, we've all gotten used to having a greater variety, and fresh greens are wonderful in the winter.