The Rural Voice, 2005-12, Page 16HOW FAR DOES YOUR TURKEY TRAVEL?
In a time
when the
average food
travels 2,500
miles to hour
plate, how
local is gour
Christmas
dinner?
ike the weather, there's plenty
L
of talk about the great
distances that food travels in a
global food market these days but
few people are doing anything about
it. Those that are include Alisa
Smith and James MacKinnon of
Kitsilano, British Columbia.
With some estimates putting the
average distance travelled by food
to reach our plate at 2,500 miles, the
couple set themselves a goal of not
eating anything that hadn't been
produced within 100 miles or 160
kilometers of their home. They've
got lots of people watching them to
see how well they cope. They write a
diary which has been published
since July on the on-line magazine
The Tyee (www.thetyee.ca) and as of
early October 100,000 people had
checked in to see how they've been
getting by. The Globe and Mail
printed a story about them and in
November the Utne Reader, a U.S.
magazine devoted to previously
published articles on alternative
thinking, was to republish some of
the series.
"People all over North America
are connecting with us," Smith told
The Globe and Mail.
The diet has had its challenges.
Though there were pleasures such as
12 THE RURAL VOICE
4,4
411gP110
kuks
learning
that locally -grown cantaloupes were
"a thousand times more delicious
than a California cantaloupe", there
were problems making jam with
local strawberries without sugar.
Honey could be used but it was
expensive.
When they began their experiment
in March, the couple went without
bread and pasta, made with grains
"imported" from farther than their
100 -mile border and, of course, rice.
Their only source of starch was
potatoes. "We lost 15 pounds in six
weeks," they told The Globe and
Mail, though they gained weight
Bg
Keith
Roulston
again in the summer when there were
plenty of local foods available.
In a way, the regimen the couple
have put themselves on harks back to
the early pioneer days when people
had to make do with only what they
could grow themselves or glean
from their surroundings. Coffee,
for instance, was unavailable so
people dried and ground dandelion
roots. Cane sugar was too
expensive so pioneers quickly
learned from the natives how to make
maple syrup and maple sugar.
Smith and MacKinnon prepared a
Thanksgiving dinner using all local
products so, as a way of looking at
the source of our food, The Rural
Voice decided to look at a typical
Christmas dinner and explore where
the food came from.
We set out to see how much
of a Christmas dinner
could come from within a
100 -mile radius of our Blyth office.
It's surprising just how local food
can be for those in midwestern
Ontario (for those spread out across
the province and in Rainy River
District it may be harder to find a
wide variety of local food).
The turkey, of course, is the
centre -piece of most family
Christmas dinners these days. For