Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Like many great adventures, the 100-mile diet began with a memorable feast. Stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness with unexpected guests, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon turned to the land around them. They caught a trout, picked mushrooms, and mulled apples from an abandoned orchard with rose hips in wine. The meal was truly satisfying; every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks. The experience raised a question: Was it possible to eat this way in their everyday lives?

Back in the city, they began to research the origins of the items that stocked the shelves of their local supermarket. They were shocked to discover that a typical ingredient in a North American meal travels roughly the distance between Boulder, Colorado, and New York City before it reaches the plate. Like so many people, Smith and MacKinnon were trying to live more lightly on the planet; meanwhile, their “SUV diet” was producing greenhouse gases and smog at an unparalleled rate. So they decided on an experiment: For one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home.

It wouldn’t be easy. Stepping outside the industrial food system, Smith and MacKinnon found themselves relying on World War II–era cookbooks and maverick farmers who refused to play by the rules of a global economy. What began as a struggle slowly transformed into one of the deepest pleasures of their lives. For the first time they felt connected to the people and the places that sustain them.

For Smith and MacKinnon, the 100-mile diet became a journey whose destination was, simply, home. From the satisfaction of pulling their own crop of garlic out of the earth to pitched battles over canning tomatoes, Plenty is about eating locally and thinking globally.

The authors’ food-focused experiment questions globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattering threads of community. Thought-provoking and inspiring, Plenty offers more than a way of eating. In the end, it’s a new way of looking at the world.

Rating : - When you would kill for some wheat flour!
In Plenty, authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon tell their story of living for a year eating only foods produced within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver. This book is also published as Plenty: Eating Locally On The 100 Mile Diet; and The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.

I think they are all the same. Regardless, I read the "Plenty: Eating Locally On The 100 Mile Diet" version.

So two vegetarian writer/journalists get the bug to eat locally. Gone is olive oil from Italy, sea salt from Hawaii, wine from Australia, or grapes from Chile. Unfortunately, living in the Vancouver, British Columbia area, this also means that wheat is in short supply, salmon is abundant, and most fruits and vegetables are very seasonal.

Here are some tidbits, and comments:

- "We were living on a SUV diet" (p. 5 in Plenty). The 100 mile diet was born.

- "We had a single ironclad rule: that every ingredient in every product we bought had to come from within 100 miles" (p. 10). They did have a "social life amendment" which allowed them to break these rules in social situations.

- As they looked in the grocery stores, they noted "Yet here we were in the modern horn of plenty, and almost nothing came from the people or the landscape that surrounded us. How had our food system come to this" (p. 13).

- "There is a term for the experience of tugging your little red wagon through a strawberry field, and that term is 'traceability'. It's a measure of how close or distant one is from one's food" (p. 54).

- "We never will accept the idea that animals can be treated like machines that produce meat, milk, and eggs" (p. 70). Unfortunately, there are both well cared for machines, and poorly cared for machines. Smith and MacKinnon consume plenty of eggs and dairy products, shellfish, fish, birds, and, eventually, small quantities of beef.

- "If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe" (p. 107). I just liked this quote from Carl Sagan!

- "That even Hebda was unaware that [California] condors were reported in the Fraser Valley into the twentieth century illustrates a ket fact about our past. We forget. The effect has been described as a double disappearance. We lose a species, or the abundance of a species, and then forget what it is we have lost" (p. 143). This is also called the "shifting baseline syndrome."

- When they learned they had to freeze their corn immediately, Smith wrote "It sounded, at best, like a Mormon's idea of a good-time Saturday night..." (p. 151). I thought this was a bit rude.

- Smith wrote, "I'm thirty-three years old, always broke, and merely 'existing' in what, without having been sealed by formal wedding vows, had become a traditional marriage. ...My only drama was in my daydreams" (p. 164). Throughout this book, I was continuously reminded that Smith and MacKinnon seemed to have no other life than to look for, prepare, store, and eat food. Their drama seemed to revolve around food, with a few references to being challenged by a bear and some family-related adventures. Few people can devote the time necessary for this type of experiment.

- "The mark of an empire, it seems, is to eat its length and breadth" (p. 198). Interesting idea.

- The differences between locally grown and imported (less fresh) foods? "'There will be nutritional differences, but they'll be marginal,' said [New York University professor Marion] Nestle. 'I mean, that's not really the issue. It feels like it's the issue - obviously fresher foods that are grown on better soils are going to have more nutrients. But people are not nutrient-deprived. We're just not nutrient-deprived'" (p. 229). This is a key point of the book. If it is not nutrients or food quality we are after, then the theme is that a local diet affects... what? Carbon in the atmosphere and its impact on global and local climate change? Self-sufficiency in case of disaster? Open space? Variety? One-upmanship? Supporting local businesses? Bragging rights? What? For example, the authors write "When at last we were together again, it was in Merida, the cultural capitol of the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico. Minnesota, Malawi, Mexico" (p. 244). The energy consumed and CO2 released from this travel... how can you say no to winter grapes from Chile?

Remember "We're just not nutrient-deprived"? We are deprived of knowledge of where food comes from. We are deprived of the color of local farmers' markets. Many, many people are deprived of their health from ill-advised food choices (locally produced foods can also be part of a poor diet plan).

So... interesting book. Not THE book. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants") will probably give you a better idea of your position in the global and local food chain.