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MAY 20, 2007 A reader asked us if we thought that local eating was just the latest youth fad, and we asked for your opinions--and at the end we'll give you ours. Brenda Simpson of Calgary wrote: I'm a boomer who grew up on a farm family in Ontario where we always ate local and home-grown produce, meat and eggs. We also ate seasonally appropriate foods. Since moving to Calgary I find it difficult to determine when fruits and vegetables are "in season" because of the influx of products from California. It just seems odd to be eating fresh strawberries at Christmas. When growing up we would only have fresh strawberries in June and July. My parents continue to be even more conservative than I am in their views of what's appropriate to eat when. So I definitely don't think it's just a Gen X/Y phenomena. Probably more of an urban versus rural mentality. The closer you are to the actual production, the more appreciation you have for the natural origins and seasonal cycles of food. Heather Di Marco wrote: I don't know if it's a generational thing, or just me and my family. I was born in the early 1960s, at the tail end of the baby boomers. I grew up on canned veggies, canned condensed soups, boxed side dishes: jars, cans and boxes . . . all processed foods. It didn't help that my mum was not a great cook; neither adventurous nor experimental. Even from my early teens I felt that something was missing. I felt so much had been lost between my generation and that of my grandparents, and so I set about teaching myself where my mother had been unable. I taught myself to bake bread. I learned to make soups and stews and stocks from scratch; to put down preserves. I learned about seasonings and spices other than msg. Today very little of my food is packaged or processed. The fruits and veggies I use are predominantly fresh. Much of what I make is from scratch. It is more time consuming, but infinitely better tasting and better for my family and me. Julia wrote: I do a lot of canning in the summer and that's really helped our 100-mile efforts. I'm sorry to see it becoming a lost art and I'm glad my girls are learning how to do it, and how valuable it is too. My seven-year-old exclaimed with delight over our organic canned peaches last week--she said that she remembers what a pain it was to peel and pit them (NOT a good canning variety!) but said they taste like sunshine in a jar now, and that they're worth it. So we have a farm-raised boomerwho appreciates local eating, and thinks that even older folk are keener on it; and a boomer who was raised on packaged foods who reacted against the supermarket, and raised her family--the next generation--on local foods. And finally a young mom whose seven-year-old--too young to be a trendster--just thinks that home-canned peaches are the best, period. Certainly, at the talks we have given we see people of all ages, from dreadlocked eccentrics to perfectly coiffed suburban housewives to plaid-clad salt-of-the-earth. I don't believe local eating is just a trend, because trends have an identifiable demographic. Local eating is for everyone and it's here to stay. -ADS

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