100-Mile Diet Challenge in Kitchener-Waterloo

Folks at the Healing Path Centre for Natural Medicine in Waterloo have spearheaded a 100-Mile Diet challenge, and 100 people from their area are living for three months entirely on food produced within a 100-mile radius.

The idea, of course, is inspired by the influential book The 100-Mile Diet by British Columbia writers Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, whose 12 reasons to eat local food include considerations of flavour, health, environment and local economic development. "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," they point out.

There's a 100-Mile Diet blog for the Healing Path project, which is especially interesting for Toronto folks because some of their potential food sources overlap our 100-mile radius. Turns out it's surprisingly tricky, even with Ontartio's wealth of local farms, to reproduce a standard North American diet. Vegetables, fruits and meat aren't so much of a problem, but of course tropical and out-of-season fruits are off the menu (no more breakfast orange juice!), as are cane sugar and chocolate. Even yeast and baking soda are problematic.

An interesting detail: if you travel while on a 100-mile diet, you don't bring your own local food with you; instead, you eat food from within 100 miles of the place you travel to. Nonetheless, particpants are sternly discouraged from hopping on a plane just to stoke up on out-of-area treats.

The three months started on July 4. You can read along with the blog to hear about 100-mile birthday cake, discover that Sifto produces local table salt, and contemplate whether you could match the courage of those participants who have been reduced, like Susannah Moodie, to attempting to make do with a chicory-and-burdock concoction instead of coffee every morning.

100 people and 100 miles for my 100th post!

Photo from Field Trip.