If you decide to partake in the100-Mile Diet, be forewarned that in order to eat a varied diet you must do a lot of planning and researching! It is also necessary to define what your 100-Mile Diet will consist of; for instance, are you considering 100 miles away from your home residence as a radius or as determined by driving along roads?
Most of the planning and preparing for doing a 100-Mile diet should start in the spring and carry out through the summer and fall so as to take advantage of all the fruits, vegetables, seeds, etc. that are produced in home gardens and in the wilderness during this time. This lesson can be learned from the authors, James and Alisa, of ‘The 100-Mile Diet’ whose first official try at a 100-Mile meal in Vancouver cost them $128.87 for feeding only four people. They soon learned that purchasing food items in bulk directly from local farmers was a much better choice; which resulted in them actually spending less than they would have with their previous ordinary diet. After an entire winter eating mostly potatoes, eggs, and beats, James and Alisa spent their late-spring, summer, and early-fall canning, freezing, drying, and fermenting various foodstuffs to use throughout the next winters months.
As the authors found, it is very difficult to have a 100% true 100-Mile diet. Yes you can eat food from your own garden and perhaps from a nearby farmer’s market: providing honey, fruit, vegetables, eggs, etc. However, just think about the many items that you would probably need to cut out of your diet (unless you are extremely lucky): salt, flour, sugar, rice, peanut butter, citrus fruits/juices, bananas, popcorn, crackers, soya sauce, brown/black/kidney beans, junk food, the majority of spices, the majority of alcoholic beverages, and chocolate (which many people, including my mom, would be devastated to lose from their diets). And many other items would require some ingenious ideas or hard work to make, such as ketchup, mayonnaise, and ice-cream.
Another thing to consider is are you just going to eat things that grow/live within 100-Miles of you or are you also going to only use products from within this area as well. If so, then this extremely limits your use of toothpaste, soap, shampoo, conditioner, dish soap, laundry detergent, etc.
No matter what choices you make in limiting your 100-Mile diet, eating from the wilderness would require extensive researching and perhaps taking some courses to educate yourself so that you don’t poison yourself while trying to better the world. This education may also help you in designing an effective garden for your area that can help sustain you.
Also, are you only considering food that is always within 100 miles from your home, because if so then the water in a well, and perhaps hunted wildlife like moose and deer, may travel through more than the 100 miles surrounding your domicile. And what about fish caught from local lakes? Do these fish travel in more area than that covered by your 100-Mile distance? And even if they don’t, are these lakes stocked with fry? If so, where do these fry come from? Even home-grown, free-range chickens are raised on supplemental food of grains, with their eggs containing some of the nutrients derived from these non-local grains; and local, range beef are grained for 6 weeks or more directly before butchering. Even your garden’s aren’t safe because the fertilizer (if you use local or your own animal’s fertilizer) is from these “free-range” chickens and “range” beef. So what edible “local” food items are really, truly, 100% from within 100-Miles of your home?
So, is it worth this extreme effort to partake in a 100-Mile diet when it not only consumes a lot of your time, but also limits a lot of food items that we’ve grown up enjoying? Or is it best to only make an effort to eat 80% or so of 100-Mile diet food, with the other 20% or so reserved for such things as delicacies (chocolate!) and international food.
Hello! I just wanted to comment upon your statement that a 100-mile diet would limit your food choices... I disagree. Well, sort of. In the general sense not too hard but with how you've really gone into the 100-mile diet for EVERYTHING it sounds hard.
ReplyDeleteEr... I guess I have something I want to say.
That is, I think what a person could eat via a 100-Mile diet will vary considerably depending upon where you are and what grows in your region - take Kamloops for example.
I do know that you can grow wheat here, having done so myself last year with great success. Furthermore beans and popping corn (as well as flour, dent, and flint) grow great here, as do potatoes, sweet potatoes, and many of different kinds of fruits and veggies. Sure, you'd have to give up bananas, but wouldn't a fresh-picked peach taste better? And how about a frozen fresh-picked peach in the middle of winter - that'd surely cheer anyone up!
Alcohol is easy enough to make... good alcohol is very hard though. Luckily Crannog Ales is nearby here!
Randomly, I believe we can grow peanuts here (but few do; it's not 'economical'). Hemp grows marvellously, as do beets and garlic. Did you know that 1 pound of garlic has over 600 calories in it? Compare that to the lowly tomato - one pound of that luscious fruit has only 90 calories.
Sorry, tangent.
As for junk food - home-made yam or potato fries are GREAT. Especially spiced with home-grown mustard and chilli peppers. And even better, oil is optional - you can fry them in butter if desired.
So... I don't mean to criticize your statement that it'd be hard to go 100-mile; I think it would just be different. And depending upon how dedicated you are, I think it would vary greatly depending upon where you live.
But I do agree that salt'd be challenging… road trip to the coast, anyone?
I guess I'm lucky, having been eating essentially a zero to 100-mile diet for the past few years, growing my own food or buying from local farmers and preserving it all for the winter…
One last comment before I sign off though - making ice cream is easy and really really fun. Essentially, you take a bucket and put another bucket inside, fill the difference between the two with water, and freeze. Once the water has frozen, add to the inner (empty) bucket milk, egg yolk (or not), honey (local, of course), as well as flavouring of your choice - eg some sun-kissed raspberries or sorrel for a lemon-taste. Put a lid upon this contraption, secure it tightly, and then enlist the help of younger relatives to kick the bucket around for about an hour. Once the mixture has been thoroughly mixed and frozen solid, take a spoon to it and enjoy!
Great post and interesting points =D
So… what about where our electricity comes from that is used to heat our homes and preserve our food and keep our freezers and computers running? How does that fit into the 100 mile diet!!!
I was thinking about the items you listed as having to be cut out and quite honestly I could do without most of them. Peanut butter, of course being the exception :)
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to hear what the person above commented about regarding how much you can actually grow in kamloops and what are alternatives to what one would have to cut out.
What intrigued me most about your post however was your paragraph on what local food is. You're quite right, we don't know if these lakes have been stocked with fish from elsewhere, or where these fish in the rivers have come from. Furthermore, you are right again when discussing "free range" chickens or eggs. We don't know what they have been fed or what they are eating has been nourished with.
That paragraph really got me thinking about the lineage of our food, and even made me a little nervous.
Found the first comment on this blog interesting as well. Thinking that maybe this person did not read the entire blog before commenting. The author of the blog stated in the first sentence of the first paragraph: "If you decide to partake in the100-Mile Diet, be forewarned that in order to eat a varied diet you must do a lot of planning and researching!"
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the actual making ice-cream is easy, if you can find a dairy that is licensed to sell milk/cream or have your own dairy cow.
We live in an area further north than Kamloops, we are much more limited to what we can grow, making it more challenging but still doable....but still haven't found a replacement for chocolate....Me