“Dieting makes you GAIN weight ………… because it takes a pound of Hershey bars and a quart of milk to wash the taste of a single Slim-Fast drink out of your mouth !!!!
- Anonymous
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Wow! Some Seattle residents (full article below) are embracing the “100 mile diet” in an effort to reduce fossil fuel use by buying foods that aren’t shipped cross-country or internationally.
Great idea!! But why only restrict it to food? If these environmental “warriors” want to “fight” global warming, they should get serious. Logically, the “100 mile diet” should be extended to other areas of their lives as well. EVERYTHING they own or use (including the raw materials used to make it) should have been created or manufactured locally.
For starters, how about “walking the walk” and apply the “100 mile diet” whenever purchasing, obtaining, using or doing any of the following:
- Vacations
- Clothing and their raw materials
- Newspapers and their raw materials
- Books
- Household appliances (e.g. washing machines) and gadgets (that big screen TV of yours)
- Copy paper and all other office supplies at the office
- The bifocals you need to read this
- Purchased automobiles and their raw materials (including the replacement set of lead-acid batteries your “green” hybrid will eventually need)
- Airports and air travel
- That bottle of tequila in your cabinet (grow your own agave cactus)
- All fuels: Gasoline, natural gas, propane, etc. - utilize that refinery next door to you
- All electrical generation capacity - utilize that power plant next door to you
- All components and raw materials of their homes
- Medical care
- The next “pro-terrorist”, er, ah, um, I mean “peace” rally you and your hippie friends are planning to attend
- Colleges and other post-secondary schools
- Spouses
- Etc. etc.
In other words, they should personally embrace the high standard of living during the feudalism of medieval Europe when virtually no one ever traveled more than 10 miles from his place of birth during his/her life.
By “leading the way” in this manner, tree-huggers can proudly display their “superior” ideas to the rest of us as to how we should be living our lives. Then they can sit back (in their hemp furniture) and watch the mad rush for the rest of us to emulate their “wisdom.”
– Smitty, 8-11-07
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Source: http://www.twincities.com/ci_6564156
These dieters think globally, eat locally
BY LISA STIFFLER
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated:08/07/2007 10:35:31 AM CDT
Say goodbye to coffee. Adios to chocolate. Bananas, pine-apples and olives, too. Store-bought cookies, crackers and cereal. Frozen dinners.
Seattle residents committed to following the “100 Mile Diet” - an experiment in eating only what’s grown 100 miles from home - said sayonara to all of these items for the month of August.
For some, the proposition appeared deceptively simple.
“I’ll agree to anything,” said Scott Bilstad, whose wife, Dr. Melissa Larson, persuaded him to join the effort. “Then the first day comes, and I’m, like, ‘What am I going to eat for lunch?’ ”
The Green Lake neighborhood couple are beginning to figure out how to adhere to the monthlong diet along with about 80 local residents.
They all have their reasons for participating. They want to reduce the use of fossil fuels by buying foods that aren’t shipped cross-country or internationally. They’re supporting and getting to know local farmers and businesses. They want to eat food that is fresher, healthier and tastes better. And at a time when food safety feels uncertain thanks to contaminated fish from China or bacteria-tainted veggies from out-of-state, people can connect with where their food comes from.
“It makes us think so much more about where we’re getting everything,” Larson said as she chopped cucumbers and onions from Pike Place Market for a recent dinner.
The menu included a chicken grilled on the barbecue, apricots with cheese made from cows in Duvall, hazelnuts and a hulled wheat called farro or emmer. The vinaigrette for the salad was sweetened with honey instead of sugar. They sipped a white wine from Lopez Island Vineyards.
The Seattle project is modeled on an experiment by a Vancouver, B.C., couple who for a year ate food from no farther than 100 miles away. This spring, they published the book “Plenty” about their experiences and started the 100milediet.org Web site to support local eating.
Since then, about 10,000 people have pledged to do their own local-eating experiments, said James MacKinnon, who wrote “Plenty” with Alisa Smith. Washington state ranks third for participation behind California and New York.
MacKinnon and Smith set 100 miles as an arbitrary boundary, a distance they said was far enough to get outside the city but still felt close to home.
The grass-roots nonprofit Sustainable Ballard is coordinating the Seattle effort to follow the diet. During the month, the group is holding a canning and preserving class, and people are encouraged to meet for local-food potlucks.
There’s a Web site for sharing recipes and shops for hard-to-find ingredients such as nuts and grains. There’s a map showing Seattle’s 100-mile boundaries from Vancouver, B.C., nearly to Portland, east to Wenatchee and across the Olympic Peninsula (the 100 miles is as the crow flies, not as the roads go). It even lists local restaurants that have pledged to serve 100-mile-diet menu items.
It sounds strict, but the rules aren’t hard and fast.
Larson - who’s helping lead the experiment for Sustainable Ballard - is striving to eat locally at least 75 percent of the time. Her family is making allowances for items including salt, spices and - on occasion - bread from wheat flour.
Others are going with 150 miles, which reaches farther into the state’s agricultural lands, while some are doing a Washington-only diet.
“We want to make it really accessible,” Larson said.
The group chose August for the experiment as a time when a variety of produce is available, but the hope is people continue eating locally as much as possible beyond August.
People come to the locally grown movement different ways.
This spring, West Seattle resident Shannon Mullett-Bowlsby read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver, in which her family also ate locally for a year.
“I sat up most of the night reading,” Mullett-Bowlsby said. “I said, ‘We’ve got to do this.’ ”
A statistic regularly cited by local-dining adherents is that on average, U.S. food travels 1,500 miles from farm to dinner plate.
“I have problems with our reliance on foreign oil,” Mullett-Bowlsby said. Eating locally “just makes sense. I want to support the local people as much as we can. I remember what it was like growing up on the farm.”
Mullett-Bowlsby shops mostly at the Ballard Farmers Market. He and his partner, Jason, are growing their own tomatoes and sugar snap peas. They’re freezing, pickling and canning everything they can before facing winter’s slimmer pickings.
Like any successful diet, this one takes commitment.
It’s often more expensive to eat locally. It takes more planning. It can be tough to find certain ingredients, such as dried beans or butter. Even basic stuff, including soup stocks, have to be made from scratch. Depending on the level of adherence, eating out is largely taboo.
But there are some happy upsides as well.
Larson is excited to begin baking bread, an activity she’d dropped from her busy life as the mom of a toddler and naturopathic doctor.
Mullett-Bowlsby, an executive with Bellevue’s Arthur Murray Dance Studios, revels in the extra time he’s spending with friends and family while shopping and cooking.
“It’s more of our interaction time now. It gave us quality time to spend together,” he said. “That should be a big draw for people. There’s a huge benefit for the family.”
