100 miles from nowhere

Vanessa and I went to see a really interesting talk last night with the authors of The 100 Mile Diet, two crazy cats who decided to try to eat locally, within a hundred mile radius from vancouver, for an entire year. I've been reading quite a few articles about these folks and they appear to be getting a lot of attention. They certainly had a captive audience yesterday.

I realized after having a long and rather silly argument last night about food habits, food politics, food security and food's future that food is something that I feel strongly about. I think a lot of people do, and I think this accounts for the incredible interest shown for the 100 mile diet. Something that struck a chord at the talk was that the authors mentioned suddenly having this never-before-experienced trust in their food, a result of seeing and understanding for the first time where their food was coming from and all the things that happened to it before reaching their plate. They explained that they had never before realized the extent to which they DIDN'T trust their food before.

This is something I have been feeling increasingly in the last while - an utter distrust verging on paranoia whenever I step into a grocery store. I sometimes wander continuously up and down the aisles without putting anything into my basket. "where does this come from? how many chemicals are in/on this? how many chemicals were pumped into the ground/ocean/sky to produce this? how many times has this been processed? how much nutritional value is left? how ethical is it to buy this product? and can i afford the ethical alternative? oh i give up, i'm going home."

It seemed so much easier when I was a vegan. I felt good about my food choices and about eating because everything seemed like a conscious ethical choice. I realize now that though I didn't consume animal products I still ate a lot of food whose environmental and social ethics were questionable. Now I eat eggs, I eat dairy, and I no longer have a set of rules that guide my food choices. I allow myself to often buy the cheaper non-organic cheeses, the non-organic milk, the chemical-laden produce. But I usually don't feel great about it, and I find myself lately spending more and more time at the ridiculously overpriced all-organic grocery store.

So what is the solution? I know that I personally will probably continue to buy mainly organic indefinitely, but that on my current budget it is perhaps not the smartest financial move. But the thought of eating in constant fear that my food is filled with carcinogens, that my food is unethical, that my food is a major pollutant, that my food is sometimes even cruel is also untenable for me.

One incredible story told at the 100 mile talk was in relation to the dungeness crab, a creature that is apparently native to this area and that is shipped across the world to china to be shelled and then shipped back to canada to be sold. This story left the audience fairly slackjawed, but i think there was also an overwhelming feeling of resignation in the room; a sense that this is all too possible a story. The world trade system seems to be one unbelievable story of common sense overpowered by profit after another. A truck full of carrots, for example, that travels across the continent only to be passed by another truck full of carrots coming from the first truck's destination and heading for that first truck's native place. Stories of local produce rotting on shelves because the same produce shipped from across the world is selling for a subsidized and totally unmatchable price. Local dairies in Jamaica going under because powdered milk (lacking so much in nutrition) is being sold for a fraction of the price. Where is the common sense, where is the concern for our environment, and where is the concern for one's local economy? Where is the sense of community?

And, as James and Alisa mentioned, where is the flavor? Where is the nutritional value? I have been flipping through a book called, rather apocalyptically, The End of Food. It mentions a number of statistics that essentially say that all the typical grocery fare that we consume has lost an average of 25 to 75 percent of its nutritional value, and almost all of it has gained only fat and salt. I'm not sure exactly where it has all gone but I guess the idea is that it has been bred out of most products in order to create produce and animal products that last last last through the thousands of miles they have to travel before being sold. And the authors continuously mentioned the fact that though this diet was difficult the rewards in terms of flavor and health were utterly worth it. Matt and I took a trip to the winter farmer's market a few weeks back and I can definitely attest to the fact that that local food was amazing. I brought home a tiny bunch of kale and collards that were the most amazingly delicious snack i may have ever eaten. I also had the fortune last summer of staying on an organic farm in Sooke for a few days where we were fed nothing but food from the garden. After spending a few hours weeding I was summoned for lunch in a homemade circular cob structure with beautiful glass windows and built-in benches, and the food, mainly freshly picked vegetables, was flavored only with a bit of oil and vinegar. So delicious. And I knew exactly where it had all come from, how it had been grown and even who had grown and picked it. Certainly no distrust involved with that meal. As James put it eloquently at the end of their talk, a year of local eating made their meals stories. So nice.

anyways, i'm sure none of this stuff is new to most of you that might be reading this, but i just thought it was all a lot of good food for thought, if you will.

heh.