The 100 Mile Diet

THE 100 MILE DIET– The typical-American meal is made up of foods that have traveled an average of 2,000 miles to get from farm to table. While this practice is convenient and may provide us with greater variety, it also has a negative impact on energy conservation, greenhouse gases, and oil dependence. In fact, industrial agriculture and long-distance food transportation generate between 20-25% of all climate destabilizing greenhouse gases in the U.S. Given this fact, buying food that is locally or regionally grown can dramatically reduce energy consumption and greenhouse pollution. Enter a new trend, started by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon: the 100 mile diet. "We're the kind of people that ride our bikes everywhere, so we wondered why we were going to all this effort when our food was flying around the world," says Smith. The diet trend, which requires participants to eat only foods grown within a 100 mile radius, is catching on across North America. Philadelphia journalist Elisa Ludwig took up the 100 mile diet for 12 days to learn more about the foods she eats. "If eating local is a moral imperative, then every meal is an opportunity to do the right thing," says Ludwig, who kept a daily journal of the experience. You can read her journal entries at http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_1463.cfm.

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