New at Reason

April 30, 2007

Katherine Mangu-Ward reviews a new book about how to eat well while only buying food from within a 100-mile radius and spending lots and lots of money.

Comments

Guy Montag|4.30.07 @ 12:41PM|#

I only buy food within walking distance, just a few blocks really.

Guess I am healthier than I realize.

ed|4.30.07 @ 12:50PM|#

My food is also a few blocks away.
I drive.

Bee|4.30.07 @ 12:51PM|#

It always amazes me, hearing these stories, that people seem genuinely surprised by the effort and expense of eating local.

It always seems to be writers, too, who embark on these projects. If I tried to do this, with my 9-7, my commute, etc., I would be trying to track down local goat cheese at 9pm on a Tuesday, or else spending every waking weekend minute dealing with my food needs.

This can't be a money-saver, even if it is more nutritious and tastes better.

|4.30.07 @ 12:55PM|#

Newsflash: Rich people can afford better doctors, and now better food.

db|4.30.07 @ 12:55PM|#

This is why humans, millenia ago, invented the concept of division of labor.

If everyone has to do everything for themselves, the only things that get done are eating, working to eat, and sleeping.

Guy Montag|4.30.07 @ 1:01PM|#

My food is also a few blocks away.
I drive.

Sometimes I drive, but that is usually only if I am on my way out of the local area.

Oh and from the article, yes all the food I buy within a few blocks is made locally. I watch them make my tacos in person at Chipotle ;)

|4.30.07 @ 1:03PM|#

If everyone has to do everything for themselves, the only things that get done are eating, working to eat, and sleeping.

I can think of one other thing that primitive hunter-gatherers manage to make time for.

shecky|4.30.07 @ 1:10PM|#

I don't get it. What's wrong with eating, say, bananas or South American strawberries and blueberries in January?

MattXIV|4.30.07 @ 1:20PM|#

It seems the main impact of "eating locally" is an extra couple gallons of gas being used to haul 2000 pounds of car and 150 pounds of yuppie back and forth from the farmers' market to pick up 1 pound of squash.

Driving 30 miles each way for honey may be many things, but environmentally friendly isn't one of them.

|4.30.07 @ 1:33PM|#

Actually, this last Saturday's edition of the FT reported on some economic/carbon generation research about the eco-friendliness of "eating local."

Turns out that it's not always true. Given the amount of oil/energy cost used in a) fertilizers b) sowing c)cultivating d) harvesting, e) greenhousing it turns out that transport can be a relatively small part and that getting food from elsewhere may be more eco-friendly.

Now, if all of us could have little gardens on our rooftops allowing us to grow our own vegetables....

(I prefer local markets because usually they haven't picked the veggies before their time. Local markets are the only places I've ever gotten decent tomatoes.)

|4.30.07 @ 1:36PM|#

People used to always eat locally. It was great and very earth friendly. That was until the earth decided not to be so friendly and inflict a draught or a pest invasion, you starved. There is a reason why we don't have famines anymore outside of third world socialist hell holes where the famine is inflicted by the government. Back in the good old days of consuming locally when the crops failed you starved. Now in the day of the world market, when the crops fail, you import other crops from somewhere where the weather was better and the biggest health problem is how fat everyone is not starvation.

These dirty hippie morons if allowed to take their stunts to their logical conclusion, everyone eating locally, would put an end to the world food and commodities market and make us all dependent on the local weather to keep from starving. We truly live in a dark age.

|4.30.07 @ 1:46PM|#

Having family who are (or were) actively engaged in the small farm lifestyle in Iowa and Missouri, I know this can work but until supermarkets and other grocers make the effort to carry more local produce(marking it as such and notwithstanding its attendant price point) it just wont fit well into the modern American's 9-5 M-F lifestyle. It is one thing to spend all day on the farm, raising the chickens, milking the goats and what not. It is another trying to find local produce that is not priced out of the market. While I agree that fresh milk tastes better and there is nothing like a vine ripe tomato, it just isn't high on most people's radar whereas price point and having fresh strawberries in January is. Personally, I like fresher more local food when I can get it, but I refuse to limit myself to just what I can get locally. If I did, I would never see another ear of corn and that would be a travesty.

Skeptic|4.30.07 @ 1:48PM|#

What I have learned from this is that writers are mostly charlatans. I may be wrong.

Guy Montag|4.30.07 @ 1:57PM|#

What I have learned from this is that writers are mostly charlatans. I may be wrong.

Yes, they need to be watched carefully, just like all of the other Liberal Arts folk. Every one of them is a ticking timebomb.

|4.30.07 @ 2:06PM|#

Here is how things work:

Since all industrial produced "conspicious consumption" items (short of private jets), are well within the buying range of the middle class... the upper middle class and above need a new way to show their status.

With the whole hand-made, fair-trade, organic, "earthy" type items, there is no way of improving production without lowering their status (they would no longer be hand-made, or fair-trade, or other category).

When you see the disdain from people who despise people who don't adopt these eating habits, you begin to understand how the rich despised the poor as moral inferiors in Victorian times.

|4.30.07 @ 2:09PM|#

"I can think of one other thing that primitive hunter-gatherers manage to make time for."

Sssssssscroggin'!

Russ 2000|4.30.07 @ 2:28PM|#

They might want to check with the farmers if they're getting their water locally.

|4.30.07 @ 3:26PM|#

I'd love to see the righteous scowl present on KMW's face as she read this book, probably scared small children.

|4.30.07 @ 3:36PM|#

Pretty girls don't scowl,
they know exactly what they want.

|4.30.07 @ 3:59PM|#

I tell you what, I've never seen a bunch of people as threatened by new ideas as the "Free Minds" crowd around here.

MattXIV|4.30.07 @ 4:05PM|#

Dan T.,

For a troll at the blog of a magazine called Reason...

|4.30.07 @ 4:08PM|#

Wait...do I drink for that?

|4.30.07 @ 4:15PM|#

I tell you what, I've never seen a bunch of people as threatened by new ideas as the "Free Minds" crowd around here.

If you point out that an idea is unfeasible on any sort of large scale, that means you're threatened by it. Check.

As always, thanks for your trenchant wit and insightful commentary, Dan T.

|4.30.07 @ 4:19PM|#

For a troll at the blog of a magazine called Reason...

Also, if you point out that Dan T. is a fucking moron who contributes nothing to any discussion he enters, and is, therefore, by the strictest definition of the word, a troll, this means that you are closed-minded and not the free thinker you claim to be. It also means that you are threatened by him.

Mike Laursen|4.30.07 @ 4:25PM|#

Set aside the yuppy, liberal, anti-capitalist aspects of the local food movement. And set aside the often veiled threat of more nanny state intrusion into our lives. What's left?

* Your local farmer's market, if you're lucky enough to have a local farmer's market, is a great place to get some really fresh, tasty food. And bargains, if you're a careful shopper.

* "The Omnivoure's Dilemma" is a very informative book, in which the author, probably in spite of his personal political beliefs, makes some powerful libertarian indictments against the government's interference in our food supply chain.

|4.30.07 @ 4:31PM|#

Why do people, by and large, seem to ignore they grey areas within so many different subjects? Why can't anybody just say, "Getting food made locally tends to taste better, and might use fewer resources than mass-produced food?"

Getting food made locally tends to taste better, and might use fewer resources than mass-produced food.

edna|4.30.07 @ 5:05PM|#

Why can't anybody just say, "Getting food made locally tends to taste better, and might use fewer resources than mass-produced food?"

bing-freakin'-o. balance is everything. At the moment, my son and i are chowing down on cherries and strawberries from less than 40 miles away, picked this morning (unbelievably good- summer is really coming!).

when we're done, we'll have some pizza, but i suspect that the flour is from the midwest and the tomatoes are from italy. basil and mozzarella are local.

not everyone gets to live in a food paradise like norcal (like me) or bc (like the authors). but when you're a freelance writer, i suppose you can pick your spot.

|4.30.07 @ 6:06PM|#

Getting food made locally tends to taste better, and might use fewer resources than mass-produced food.

Splitter! Fascist!

|4.30.07 @ 6:14PM|#

Liked Pollan's book and am lucky enough to live near some farms that are doing it right - grass fed beefers, fresh raw milk, chickens that eat/live right and taste even better (esp their eggs), good veggies in summer. I could really care less if there's any sort of "revolution" or "big change". But I would like to continue eating from that farm and the only thing I see stopping me at this point is gubermint intrusion. The place is clean as a whistle and has a bunch of regular customers, however the gvmnt likes to hassel them, not on safety or sanitation issues, but on paying this fee and that, filling out this form in triplicate etc etc. Pretty frustrating for them, and also sort of weird given all the crap that a "government farm" does to plants and animals. Even though this farms animals and plants are going to meet the same end as the others, they look pretty content hanging out in that big green field when I drive down there - and get tasty living that way.

Yep, there's a few beemers and mercedes parked there from time to time owned, I'm sure, by some rich folks looking for an edge over the masses, but prices aren't too bad for my toyota pickup driving carcass and for me the quality of the ingredients is worth it.

Who knows, maybe it'll catch on and this type of stuff will be more available. On the other hand, it's not likely as long as the government gets in the way and seriously promotes (through subsidies)growing corn and soybeans to the exclusion of everything else in the grainbelt.

dr. dog|4.30.07 @ 7:07PM|#

Several months ago, the Economist published a good profile of organic, local, and fair trade food. In their view, less energy is used to import foreign food than buying similar food locally, due to greater efficiencies in mass transport.

Unsurprisingly, organic food had no demonstrable health benefits, and the less-intensive farming was inefficient and needed more farmland to produce the same amount of food.

Fair trade was a crock because it incentivized overproduction that further decreased the price of the commodity beneath "fair" levels.

If you like the taste of these more and you're willing to pay accordingly, then fine. But anybody who claims that buying this food is automatically better for society or the environment needs a swift kick in the balls.

Mike Laursen|4.30.07 @ 8:23PM|#

Since I can't actually access the article from the Economist, I'm going to have to trust their conclusions. And your plan of action based on their conclusions. Well, then, let's go kick some balls!

|4.30.07 @ 8:41PM|#

1. It's almost cheating to use the Fraser River Valley as your source. I have friends that live up there, and it's one of the most productive ag regions in the world. Also, Vancouver is close to amazing sources of seafood. If the Apocalypse looms, I'm heading for Ed and Georgina's place.

I'm lucky enough to live near agricultural areas, and, while I fudge on the hundred mile thing, genearally only buy Texas-grown products, and from the farmer's market where it's possible. I do this for one reason: the local stuff tastes better. Enormously, astonishingly, is-this-the-same-species-as-the-tasteless-grocery-store-stuff better. This means that I don't eat out of season fruit or vegetables, but it also means I eat better.

Let's use strawberries for example. No matter how good edna's Cali berries are, they have to be picked unripe in order to ship them to Texas for me to buy 'em. Otherwise, they would have truckloads of uncooked strawberry jam. Thus, they taste dreadful when they arrive. The Poteet strawberries I do buy are fresh and ripe, and actually have a flavor.

To the extent that there's a moral component to this, however, I'd have to say it's only in the fact that if the good stuff tastes better, we'll eat that instead of the processed crap, which means we're all healthier. There's a side issue of trying to avoid unnecessarily damaging farming practices, like some of the stuff in Cali's Imperial Valley, especially irrigation from the Colorado River. Still, I'll grant you that most of the people who write these books, Alice Waters included, are insufferable.

edna|4.30.07 @ 9:59PM|#

yes, alice waters is too precious for words. har!

you hit the other main point besides geography- seasonality. don't expect decent strawberries in january. don't expect decent tomatoes in april. you can get them, but no matter where, they'll be as fine looking as the japanese wax food in restaurant windows and have about the same flavor.

and kids, don't do what i did- when the first good cherries and strawberries of the year show up, don't pig out or you and your bathroom will regret it.

Bee|5.1.07 @ 12:53AM|#

Yeah, Karen brings up another issue which I don't hear a lot of discussion about - irrigation practices which enable local growing. The Colorado is a pitiful trickle by the time it reaches Mexico, having been hijacked to water carrots in the Coachella Valley. Maybe I *shouldn't* be able to buy some of my local produce...is growing lettuce in the desert really the best use of our resources?

But hell, I've seen Texas, and it ain't no naturally-irrigated paradise. THAT is some godawful scorched brown land. (I was in Midland/Odessa, Killeen and El Paso, but I'm told that other bits of Texas are really terrific.)

|5.1.07 @ 7:50AM|#

SOme interesting comments... As a small farmer in the new england area I am encouraged by the eat local folks because they make it possible for me to keep on doing this as long as I want to...No matter what all food costs alot to produce, and uses a ton of petroleum products. So farming ecologically would be to use horse powered plows and direct seed everything. Not happening at my farm. The reality is that the best benefit of the eat local program is that it strengthens the local economy. The side benefit is that people get the opportunity to eat some really good food and keep thier neighbors in business. Local food tastes better because it is fresher... it doesnt neccessarily mean it is better for you. Also just for the record just because it is organic does not mean it is better. I use organic practices but am not certified but sometimes I produce food that tastes not so good. It has a lot to do with the growing conditions and the soil conditions.. healthy soil produces healthy foods.. ok I gotta go do some sort of farm thing.....

Russ 2000|5.1.07 @ 9:51AM|#

Karen brings up another issue which I don't hear a lot of discussion about - irrigation practices

For the record, I brought it up earlier in the thread. We're havin' a contest, doncha know.

Anyway, I think the "local" angle should also be applied to other products, not just food. I'd use locally produced meth, but again the goddamn government interferes.

|5.1.07 @ 10:19AM|#

Regarding the questions on irrigation practices.

Better ask the urban/ suburban shopper at the local farmers market where their water came from.

It is not uncommon for growing cities to buy water rights from the farmers. This water is then used for the environmentally useful practice of watering lawns and golf courses.

T\'Surakmaat|5.1.07 @ 4:03PM|#

Especially if, as is the case in Vancouver, not every day is a deliriously perfect spring day with "chocolate-colored cats sunning themselves on the dikes."

yes, it's true; all dykes have cats. except me.

live long and prosper
T'Surakmaat

|5.1.07 @ 7:02PM|#

Uh oh, I hear the crunch of the Cruncy Cons!!