Boston Globe: A new diet keeps you close to home
By Cathy Huyghe, Globe Correspondent July12, 2006
It sounds like a nice idea: For one year, eat only those foods that have been grown or produced within 100 miles of home.
First you have to see how far off you are and check the shelves in your pantry, the wine on your racks, and the vegetable crisper in your fridge. They probably hold canned tomatoes from Italy. Wine from France, Chile, Australia, even South Africa. Olive oil from Greece. Beef from America’s heartland. Orange juice from Florida.
A “100-mile diet” movement, instigated most recently by a campaign for local eating launched by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon of Vancouver,British Columbia, is slowly making its way across the continent. As it does, it encourages consumers to look around their own regions and see what’s available. Summer is a logical time to do this. Farmstands make it easy to find native produce, some farmers’ markets carry local beef, many shops in this area — as they always have — offer fish from our own waters. Add dairy products from our own herds, and you can actually accomplish this diet .
Granted, the idea sounds utopian, unrealistic, utterly absurd. But start to consider it and a menu begins to unfold. If you want to cook locally, those Italian plum tomatoes will have to go, as will steaks from the Midwest. Native tomatoes will come into the markets later this month , and you can buy River Rock Farm’s beef, grass-fed in Brimfield, in some farmers’ markets. Pour glasses of wine from Greenvale Winery in Portsmouth,R.I., spoon fresh local berries and cream into bowls, and call up your favorite guests.
David Webber, of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, the state’s spokesman for farmers’ markets, says, “Area consumers can not only find Massachusetts-grown vegetables and fruits, but also dairy products, meats, eggs, honey, maple, wine, and more.”
Smith and MacKinnon, the Canadian couple, started their own 100-mile diet in the spring of 2005. On their website, www.100milediet.org, they write that for most people, a single regional meal might be more feasible than a year-long endeavor, which is what they did. “For one year we ate only the freshest food that had traveled the shortest possible distances and was eaten or preserved at its seasonal peak,” they write.
The term the couple uses to describe the 100 miles around their home is “foodshed.” It borrows from the concept of a watershed, according to the Wisconsin Foodshed Research Project, and was coined as early as 1929 to describe the flow of food from the area where it was grown to the place where it is consumed. In the 2002 book “Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods,” author Gary Paul Nabhan refers to the “foodshed logic” of America’s old farming cultures, when four-fifths of what any family ate came from its own fields and those of neighbors.
For the purposes of eating locally, 100 miles radiates in all directions from the place where you live. For example, a foodshed with CopleyPlaza as its locus includes to the north, half of New Hampshire, a thin slice of southeastern Vermont, and the bottom eighth or so of Maine. To the west, the line goes nearly to the Berkshires and extends to half of Connecticut. To the south, Cape Cod, the islands, and all of Rhode Island is well within range.
That’s quite a lot of territory and includes fishing grounds and all kinds of small family farms.
Webber of the MDAR points to a wealth of artisanal products in this area, including granola, herbal vinegars, and fruit preserves. As for natural resources, monkfish will be plentiful this summer, and haddock stocks are coming in from Gloucester (36 miles from Boston). Lobstermen in Manchester-by-the-Sea (30 miles) normally fish within a stone’s throw of the shore line. Apples such as Macoun, Mutsu, and Northern Spy are at the Atkins Farms Country Market in South Amherst (91 miles). Honey is collected from Reseska Apiaries’ bees in Holliston (27 miles), Concord (17 miles), and Lexington (13 miles). Cape Cod cranberries go into one of 10 wine vinegars at Chicama Vineyards on Martha’s Vineyard (90 miles). Great Hill Blue, a cow’s milk cheese from Great Hill Dairy is produced in Marion (58 miles). Carlisle Chabichou, a goat’s milk cheese, is made by Tricia Smith in Carlisle (26 miles).
Eating locally requires a shift in perspective, a “zooming in” to the local climate, geography, and history. But in light of the fact that the food on most Americans’ plates has traveled upward of 1,500 miles, say Canadians Smith and MacKinnon — who call this the “SUV diet” — and most meals include ingredients produced in at least five other countries, a dramatic change is in order.
For some local producers, “zooming in” is a necessity, not a choice. Azuluna Brands, which supplies veal to local restaurants and free range eggs to Roche Bros. stores, was created by the TuftsVeterinary School in Grafton, and an ongoing USDA grant. The grant, says Dr. George Saperstein, is “intended to conserve farm land in the region and to provide diversity in income streams to farmers who are subject to commodity price swings out of their control.” In his opinion, the best way to keep open space in a region where animal agriculture is in financial trouble is to provide local consumers with premium products custom-raised by local farmers.
The demand for local goods is high in the western part of the state. In SouthAmherst, says Jen Adams of the Atkins Farms Country Market, a Communities Involved in Sustaining Agriculture campaign has helped to educate consumers. The mission is to sustain agriculture by building a secure local food and farming system, strengthening relationships between consumers and farmers, increasing farm profitability, and preserving rural communities.
In the meantime, imagine fluffy omelets of free-range eggs from NorthGrafton with blue cheese from Marion gracing the breakfast table, and thick slices of Maine’s When Pigs Fly whole-wheat toast. For lunch, Atlantic monkfish might simmer in a chowder with Maine potatoes and come to the table with Milton-based Bent’s Cookie Factory common crackers. Dinner can offer a Tyngsboro-raised turkey breast roasted with a Holliston honey glaze and a salad dressed with cranberry vinaigrette. Wash it all down with hand-crafted Portsmouth, N.H., root beer, and finish with fresh blueberries.
That gets you through one day. If you’re on board, you’ve got 364 more to go.
Draw your own foodshed using the instant mapping tools on www.100milediet.org.
