The 100-mile diet is a book about a couple who decides to eat, for a year, food that was grown within a 100-mile radius of their home. It is a book about food but also about the economy, evolution, ecology. The authors, both journalists, alternate the writing of chapters. The divisions follow the months, which makes sense as food is seasonal. You can go back to a chapter, fairly confident of what you will find. Each chapter starts with a recipe and a quote.
I "ate" the book. From the start, I was hooked. My expectations were low. I thought the book was capitalizing on a fad. Actually, the reverse is true. The authors were discussing the ecological footprint and then decided they would try and reduce their own by eating food grown in a 100-mile radius from where they live. They set down ground rules and went about their business eventually posting an article on the Web. People started following their efforts and the idea snowballed with others following in their stead.
Required reading if you care about your planet.
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4 comments:
The 100-Mile diet is very interesting. If you liked this book I would recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingslover. Excellently written and really makes you think about what you eat and in which season you eat it.
I'm only a third of the way through Animal Vegetable Miracle (thanks Vicki!) and have already been inspired to plant my first vegetable garden and build a composter (blog posts to come!)
After I get through AVM (and A Star Called Henry for book club :-)) I'm totally investigating the 100 Mile diet.
Although the omnivore's dilemma (the actual dilemma, not the book!) makes my head hurt sometimes, there's also no issue more interesting or IMPORTANT. Every concern/issue/decision comes back around to being about food, in the end.
Thanks for the tip: I will go looking for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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