Everyone is obsessed with where their food comes from. We love to talk about it, read about it, think about it. People go to the farmers' market once a month for three heirloom tomatoes and pat themselves on the back for eating locally. The sad reality though is that we're not exactly eating the way we pretend to be. Three tomatoes does not a factory-farm-crushing movement make.
I'm guilty of it myself. I live close to a good-sized, well-priced, year-round farmers' market. For the first few months, we went pretty regularly, almost every Saturday. Almost every Thursday, we'd end up throwing out about 50% of the stuff bought the previous weekend. We always had the best intentions, and the best food-porn fantasies of some sort of urban (urbane?) Martha Stewart-ish life overflowing with the freshest local products consumed at their nutritional and culinary peak.
Unfortunately, it always seems easier to stock up on more shelf-stable, reliable (read: imported from Chile in the off-season) produce at our local chain store. Now add in the fact that, contrary to farmers' market propaganda, eating locally and seasonably translates into spending more cash. It's easy to see why most people most of the time just say "fuck it" and go to Safeway instead.
This idea of eating locally has always appealed to me for both reasons of taste as well as politics. Food that ripened on the vine tastes better than food that ripened in a box on the floor of a food distributor's warehouse. The closer it was made to you, the better it tastes, and the less time it spent traveling in a big-rig wasting gasoline and getting old. Buying local products supports local people. I probably buy a lot more locally than the average American already. But can I live on local products alone?
I recently stumbled across the The Eat Local Challenge, a bunch of food folks basically challenging themselves to eat food produced within a one hundred mile radius of home for a week.
Further, this challenge is about trying to eat local within the budget for the "average" American family. Whoever those people are, they must be eating like crap. For a household with two working adults, that budget is $144.
Why do this?
To prove that it can (or can't) be done. And to raise questions about the state of food production and consumption in this country.
$144 a week. I hate to say it, but that's only a bit more than we spend each week on lunch in downtown San Francisco. But that's what we're going to try and live on for seven days.
I have no doubt that two people can survive on $144. I could, and have, survived on much less. I have serious doubts about being able to eat fresh, local food on that kind of money. For one, local products skew toward the artisinal and expensive. Giant corporations can churn out foodstuffs in greater quantities at lower prices than a guy with a couple acres and a hen house. There's also the fact that everything I eat just isn't produced within 100 miles of my house.
There's probably a lot more being made locally than I know about, but the reality is I don't have the time to seek it all out. And there's the questionable ethics of burning several gallons of gas to go pick up "locally" milled flour or whatever that's only available at one small store 15 miles away. At what point does the effort to acquire the local good overtake whatever moral/social/environmental good using the local product creates in the first place?
Can't wait to see how this all shakes out.
The Plan
From Saturday the 21st through Friday the 27th, we're going to make our best efforts eat local, only consuming products produced within 100 miles of home. We'll be attempting to do so on a budget of $144. Since the average American spends $8 a week on alcohol, we're adding that into our total (It's unclear from the website, but I assume that to mean $8 per person). That brings us to $160.
As far as exemptions, spices and such. Since we're not exactly on the spice route, and San Francisco Bay sea salt sounds entirely unappealing, this one's a no go. Diet Pepsi also is exempt. Without it, I would die. The Pepsi stays. As does coffee. We don't drink much of it anyway, but what we do drink is locally roasted at least.
I'm also exempting anything anyone else cooks, if we go to any dinner parties or potlucks or whatever. In college, I lived with a lot of obnoxious trust-fund hippie vegans. Inflicting your weird food quirks on other people is an asshole move I just won't do.
If I can't get something produced within my hundred-mile bubble, then I'll at least try to buy from a local small business.
I'm excited about the week ahead. I think the most interesting lesson will be the cost. The local/sustainable/organic mantra gets beaten into everyone's heads around here, but this will be the first time I'll be consciously keeping track of how realistic that is, from both a time and money perspective.
Stay tuned. It'll be fun. And I've already nailed down a source for locally-produced bacon.
