The 100-Mile Diet Books
The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (Canada & Australia Edition)
Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet (US Edition)
[The 100-Mile Diet] posits a brilliant, improbable, and finally deliciously noble notion of connecting to the world by striving first to understand what's under foot. Beautifully written and lovingly paced, it is at once a lonely and uplifting tale of deep respect between two people, their community, and our earth. [The 100-Mile Diet] will change your life even if you never could or would try this at home.
- Danny Meyer, chef and author,
Setting the Table
"A compelling, relevant story without preaching or darkening our minds with guilt."
-
The Vancouver Sun
"This very human and often humorous adventure about two people eating food grown within a short distance of their home is surprising, delightful, and even shocking. Nothing you eat will look the same! This inspiring and enlightening book will give you plenty to chew on."
- Deborah Madison, chef and author,
Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets
"Eating locally isn't just a fad like the various diets advertised on late-night TV-it may be one of the most important ways we save ourselves and the planet."
- Dr. David Suzuki, chair, The David Suzuki Foundation
"A funny, warm, and seductive account of how we might live better - better for the earth, better for the community, better for our bellies!"
- Bill McKibben, author,
Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
"The 100-Mile Diet is perhaps the quickest and cleverest way to build awareness of food miles, and the pleasures and challenges of local ‘foodsheds'…I embrace the noble challenge."
- Wired.com
"I think they're nuts."
- Anthony Bourdain, author,
Kitchen Confidential
About the Book
Like many great adventures, the 100-mile diet began with a memorable feast. Stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon turned to the land around them. They caught a trout, picked mushrooms in the forest, and mulled apples from an abandoned orchard with rose hips in wine. The meal was truly satisfying; every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks. The experience raised a question: Was it possible to eat this way in their everyday lives?
Back in the city, they began to research the origins of the items that stocked the shelves of their local super market. They were shocked to discover that a typical ingredient in a North American meal travels roughly the distance between Toronto and the Yukon before it reaches the plate. Like so many people, Smith and MacKinnon were trying to live more lightly on the planet; meanwhile, their "SUV diet" was producing greenhouse gases and smog at an unparalleled rate. So they decided on an experiment. For one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home.
It wouldn't be easy. Stepping outside the industrial food system, Smith and MacKinnon found themselves relying on World War II-era cookbooks and maverick farmers who refuse to play by the rules of a global economy. They bargained for sacred squash at a suburban Buddhist temple, discovered the true sweetness of honey, and learned the lost history of dozens of varieties of local wheat. What began as a struggle slowly transformed into one of the deepest pleasures of their lives. For the first time they felt connected to the people and the places that sustain them.
For Smith and MacKinnon the 100-mile diet became a journey whose destination was, simply, home. From the satisfaction of pulling their own crop of garlic out of the earth to pitched battles over canning tomatoes, The 100-Mile Diet is about eating locally and thinking globally.
The authors' food-focused experiment questions globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattering threads of community. Thought-provoking and inspiring, The 100-Mile Diet offers more than a way of eating. In the end, it's a new way of looking at the world.
About the Authors
ALISA SMITH is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Outside, Utne Reader, and many other publications. Based in Vancouver, she spends her summers in a wilderness cabin in northern British Columbia.
J.B. MACKINNON is the author of the acclaimed Dead Man in Paradise, which won the 2006 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction. He is the winner of three national magazine awards as a freelance writer, and is a former senior editor at Adbusters. He lives with his co-author in Vancouver.
$19.95 CAD
Random House Canada, Toronto
www.randomhouse.ca
$13.95 USD
Three Rivers Press, New York
http://crownpublishing.com
$34.95 AUD
Text Publishing, Melbourne
www.textpublishing.com.au
