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Boston Globe: The Localvore's Dilemma

by Jen Maiser

The Boston Globe published an article this week titled "The Localvore's Dilemma."  In it, the author outlines the question of whether eating locally-grown food really is better for energy consumption than growing the food far away in an area meant to grow that particular product and bringing it in to the cities using energy-saving methods (ie., train vs. truck).  This is the same discussion that comes from Peter Singer's book, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter and has been echoed recently by several other sources.  Local is fine and can be energy efficient, asserts the Globe, but not when you are using greenhouses to grow out of season food that isn't normally grown in your area. 

Choosing Local, One Thing at a Time

by Expat Chef

An interview with Tim Schlitzer, Executive Director, Food Routes Network and Buy Fresh Buy Local.

Chances are if you live near one of its 50 chapters in 17 states, you've seen a "Buy Fresh Buy Local" sign. Sighting one of these is a great way to know you are near a source of an active local food network.

"It's not a brand," he says. "It's just continuity that can be identified." You see, brands, according to Tim, mean a label. A set definition. Rules. Eating local is for a person and a community to define for themselves. An approach not unlike that of the Eat Local Challenge.

One Local Summer 2007

by Liz

Looking for an easy way to introduce local eating into your lifestyle?  Join us at One Local Summer, where as a group, we are preparing one entirely local dinner (or as close as we can get) each week of the summer. It's a great way to explore the bounty of what your state has to offer, and start learning when certain things come into season.

There's really no better time to start eating local produce than in the summer when vegetables are at their peak in freshness and flavor, and farmers markets are in full swing.

Farmers' Market Largess

by Jen Maiser

The lovely blogger who posts at "The Public, the Private and Everything in Between" has a post describing her attempts to eat locally this summer.  I enjoyed her cogent insights about several aspects of eating locally. 

An excerpt:

It felt good, finally, to do something I’d been meaning to do for such a long time, and know for at least one day out of my wasteful grownup life I helped the environment (buying local obviously means signicantly less gas was wasted delivering your food, plus the produce isn’t packaged or dumped into plastic bags) while at the same time buying healthy, beautiful food for S. and me.

Read her post here.

FDA Knew About Risks

by Expat Chef

If you have seen the front page of most newspapers, then you know that the FDA was aware of the problems that led to the spinach and peanut butter contamination for some time before the outbreaks.

In the case of the Salmonella in the peanut butter, the FDA knew of the issues as early as 2005. When FDA inspectors requested documents from the ConAgra plant, they were refused. The FDA inspector left and the issue was not followed up on.

While the spotlight is being thrown onto the FDA, with reason, there are others who need to be called into question.

To/Fro

By VI

My mantra on how's it going (Eat Local), has always been, don't ask me now, ask me later.  In other words, right now it's easy to eat local (say at the peak of farmer's markets), but I don't know how easy it will be in a few months when we are dipping into the larder.  After about two years of concerted efforts to eat local, there's a lot more now and a lot less waiting for later.  It really has not been that hard to remain local in our house.  Rather, just now is when it's just getting difficult to eat local.  In fact the hardest time for an eat local-er in the upper Midwest is this time of year.

USDA's Crazy Chicken Dance

by Expat Chef

Under the heading of things that make you go "What the ...?!" is this latest headline from the wisdom of the USDA. New rulings will allow us to import chicken from China. Yes, China where there are outbreaks of Bird Flu that have cost human lives, 29 outbreaks already this year.

To make matters more confusing, the USDA is proposing sending the chickens to China for processing, then importing them back after processing, and this is CHEAPER than processing the chickens here. How is a round trip to China for poultry that is grown here cheaper than processing the birds here? Especially when the poultry industry already produces chicken under questionable conditions in order to keep prices down.

You have to wonder if the USDA has our health and safety in mind when you read things like this. This is an organization the is supposed to protect the quality and safety of our food supply and those of our nation's food producers.

It just makes no sense. I'll be looking for my chickens at a local farm, where I can watch the processing if I choose to. It won't require a passport for me or the chickens.

Reason 101 To Eat Seasonally: Total Gluttony

by Tea

Eating locally means eating seasonally. It means that those of us in the northern hemisphere are not shilling out for asparagus in the dead of winter—asparagus grown and shipped in from Argentina. Instead we savor baked butternut squash, salads of crunchy fennel, braised endive, and roasted beet salad with citrus dressing. It aint half bad.

But there’s something else that’s really great about eating local and seasonally, something they don’t tell you up front, and that’s the excuse for total and absolute gluttony.

You see the seasons don’t hang around forever. When a certain item is in season, you’ve gotta get your fill. No one can blame you either, it’s just common sense.

Eating Local: More important than ever

by Expat Chef

When a friend of mine who had moved to China got pregnant, I was determined to send her something for the new baby. I was certain that she would not have the same convenience of supermarket-sized Baby World type stores there. I just knew she desperately needed Baby Stuff.

Funny thing. As I toured just such a huge store, I kept choosing items from the shelves only to turn them over and see, "Made in China." I got desperate. After an hour of tearing through "Super Mega Baby Mart" I began to lose my grip on reality. Seems like anything "baby" in the U.S. originated in China. Just to be sure, I checked the soles of my own child's feet. I have the scar, I can PROVE she was made here, but you never know ...

Michael Pollan at Mondavi Center (11-29-06)

Eating local has influenced areas of my life beyond food.  Take gifts.  I’m not a fan of acquiring more stuff, especially if the stuff was made a million miles away.  So my mom and I have a new tradition.  We take each other out to see plays, hear music and participate in cultural events.  This year for my birthday we heard Michael Pollan speak the Mondavi Center at UC Davis.  Awesome gift, Mom.

Did you know you are 10 times more likely to have a conversation at a farmers’ market than you are at a grocery store?  Or that Americans get 80% of their diet from 4 or 5 plants?  By the way, if you guess that two of them are corn and soy, you’re right.

He also noted that we ship sugar cookies to the Danes and the Danes ship sugar cookies to us, and asked wouldn’t it be cheaper if we just swapped recipes?

He was funny, the talk was riveting, and here’s a recap of some of what he said (based on notes I wrote on my program in the dark with a faulty pen).