Mission Challenge: The Rules
We challenged people in the fast-growing town of Mission, B.C., to try local eating for 100 days starting on June 1. Nearly 100 people signed up on the spot - and we couldn’t resist signing up, too. We’re back on a fully local diet, this time with plenty of company and a camera crew taking it all in for the Food Network. Can a community change the way it eats? Let’s find out. If you’re in Mission and taking the challenge, we want to hear from you. And it’s never to late to get involved: Join in for a month, a week, even a single meal.
DAY 13–The one question we get most often from people taking the Mission 100-Mile Challenge (or trying the 100-mile diet generally) is, What are the rules? So let me try to be perfectly unclear and evasive about it once and for all.
Here’s what we generally say about the rules, as written up on the Getting Started page:
There are no rules. Make your 100-Mile Diet experiment a challenge. If you’re trying it for a day, consider getting tough: every ingredient in every product has to come from within 100 miles (that was our rule for a year). Over a longer period, escape clauses are nice. Maybe the occasional restaurant meal or dinner at friends’ houses? And what will you do if you travel? Ask some deeper questions, too. If you eat meat, where does the feed for the animals come from? If you’re vegetarian, would you be prepared to eat animal products if no beans or tofu are raised where you live? If you just can’t live without coffee, don’t let it stop you. Wave your magic wand and declare it ‘local.’
Pretty soft, eh? But for those who aren’t making a 100 percent commitment to local eating, I still think that’s the best advice we can give. Local eating should feel like an adventure, not a punishment. But what about people who are trying to go 100 percent for the pure fun of the challenge?
Well, all I can tell you is what Alisa and I are doing, and why. As you’ll see, “100 percent” for us might end up being, well, 99.5 percent.
1. No restaurant meals unless at restaurants committed to local foods. In Mission, several restaurants are or will be serving totally local meals to 100-mile challengers - a great choice for a night out. Since we’re in Vancouver most of the time, we’ll allow ourselves a few meals out at a very small list of restaurants that we know are deeply dedicated to local and seasonal food.
2. A very, very, limited “social life clause.” No nonlocal business lunches, beers with the team, meals at friends’ places, etc. So far, we plan only one exception: a special engagement party for two friends. It just wouldn’t feel right to interfere with something like that. And we promise to feel guilty.
3. If we travel, we will eat the local foods of the destinations we visit, or food packed from home, or a combination of the two. We allow ourselves to bring home local foods from the places we visit - that just makes sense. Likewise if friends are coming to visit from away - we’ll welcome any food gifts they bring. Yes, I do have friends in the tropics. No, mangoes are not allowed through Canadian customs.
4. We are drinking local wine despite the nonlocal yeast, and we’re eating local cheese despite the nonlocal rennet and salt. We make such exceptions on a case-by-case, gut-feeling basis. By volume, yeast, rennet, and salt are used in incredibly small amounts in these products, which are otherwise fully in the spirit of local foods. Those are the only exceptions I can think of. We don’t, say, drink sugared wines or eat breads baked locally with nonlocal grain.
5. To us, if the simple product in front of us - like an egg, or a mushroom, or a fava bean - is totally local, we’ll eat it. Where did the feed come from for the chicken? The fertilizer for the mushroom? The seed for the bean? Those are all good questions, and exactly the kind of thing the 100-mile diet is designed to explore. In the end, it’s all about learning for yourself and making informed decisions based on your own values.
So those are our words of guidance. We’re don’t make good “food police” and we’re not too into dogma. That said, the deeper you challenge yourself, the more that you learn and open yourself up to change. Do what you do on any adventure: go deep, and use common sense.
Hey, put down that coffee cup! Radish juice is in season!
Cheers,
James
