Sustainability and Conservation
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The 100 Mile Diet
There is a new book out called The 100 mile diet, now this is not a diet in which your goal is to loose weight, but rather the goal is to be more conservative and sustainable. The concept is to not eat anything out of season or that comes from more than 100 miles away from where you live. By doing this it accomplishes a lot of good results, for instance:
1. Shopping at your local farmers’ market, most local produce has been picked inside of 24 hours. It comes to you ripe, fresh, and with its full flavor, unlike supermarket food that may have been picked weeks or months before. Close-to-home foods can also be bred for taste, rather than withstanding the abuse of shipping or industrial harvesting, not to mention Organic and less chemicals.
2. When we eat locally, we eat what’s in season. You’ll remember that cherries are the taste of summer. Even in winter, comfort foods like squash soup and pancakes just make sense–a lot more sense than flavorless cherries from the other side of the world, that took millions of gallons of fuel to get to you.
3. A study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country. The ingredients for a typical British meal, sourced locally, traveled 66 times fewer “food miles.†Or we can just keep burning those fossil fuels.
4. We support our local farms and give back to the community and local economy.
These are just a few things that the 100 mile diet accomplishes, I think it is a great concept, in fact I practice the 10 step diet, because it takes 10 steps to get to my own garden. Think about it, and learn what you can do to be more sustainable. And don’t forget about the great Gardening Book “The All New Square Foot Gardening“. Take Care All!
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Hi Charlie. It looks like you are back and I am putting you back on the front page where you belong. I don’t send folks somewhere if nobody is there. But you are here now right?
Enjoyed the post. I’m not sure about the prescription vs natural remedy debate though.
You and Evita probably would agree about that. She doesn’t like Teflon either and many of us use that on our frying pans.
We may be going from the Teflon coated frying pan into the fire so to speak.