Watch your (Fo)odometer!

posted by Sara Zoë

“Interested in eating less oil? In this VideoNation/Hidden Driver report, animator Molly Schwartz keeps track of how many miles your food travels from field to fork.”

I like that the (very cute & well designed) video brings up some of the other environmental factors besides food miles that eating locally helps to address - packaging and processing. When you bring your own bag to the farmers’ market or farm stand (I keep a couple totes in the car and near the door), you can get out of there with lots of food and very little packaging indeed - no more layers of cellophane, cardboard, more plastic. And most of the food is in its raw, unprocessed form. The book Twinkie, Deconstructed was enormously insightful for me - I learned a lot about the amount of energy needed to create processed foods. Sort of unbelievable how many factories and how much processing goes into a lot of everyday sorts of foods, let alone the super-processed Twinkies. For me, eating locally has not really been about nutrition and health (more taste enjoyment, environment, and society) but this all gets me thinking about those benefits, too - about how I don't really want to put things in my body that are the product of industry and chemical reactions. That the vegetables taste better when they are grown with more care and harvested ripe makes it a whole lot easier to eat healthy.

cross posted at the Seacoast Eat Local blog

Comments

[Lisa]

Thanks for the video! What I haven't figured out yet is - How are we supposed to eat locally the other 9 months of the year?

[plentyofmoxie]

Well, I can get local dairy, meat, and eggs year 'round. And it's amazing how early spring greens start (I'm up here in NH and they start in early May) and how late everything goes - up here, around Thanksgiving for winter greens, potatoes, etc. So that just leaves 5 months - for which I freeze, can, and cut myself some slack. I start buying locally produced foods to support those local businesses. And I indulge in some pineapples and avocados and citrus. Not a lot, but some in between my stored winter squash and potatoes and onions. And they taste mighty fine when they are my winter nutrition treats.