Brian Halweil on Word of the Year

Brian Halweil has a great piece on Serious Eats called "Food Words for Thought: 'Locavore' as 2007's Word of the Year."

Big players up and down the food chain, from Wal-Mart to Whole Foods, are figuring out how to transport food a couple of hundred miles instead of several thousand—a challenge, since the current spread of farms and existing shipping infrastructure can make it easier and cheaper to purchase long-distance food. Industry surveys peg "local" at just a few percent of national food sales, although it's a sector soaring at 22 percent a year, according to consumer research firm Packaged Facts.

So don't call us a Locavore Nation just yet. Now is more like the amuse-bouche stage.

But one word really doesn't capture the tectonic shift that is happening in America's alimentary affairs. We are becoming more gastroliterate, as a blossoming culinary lexicon sets us a bright, new place at the dinner table.

Read the entire post here.

Comments

[Bruce Cole]

Brian's article looks much prettier on the ESF website.
:)

[winechild]

But loca is "crazy" shouldn't it be localvore? Of course our packaged food shipping is loca!