The 100-mile diet involves only eating food grown and raised within 100 miles of the dinner table, known as “locavores”. Food miles impact the environment, farming practices, and food quality. The diet promotes healthier, locally sourced food and supports the local community while potentially being cheaper in the long run.
The 100-mile diet is a term used in American food activism to describe a diet consisting entirely of food grown and raised within 100 miles (161 kilometers) of the dinner table. Followers of the diet often describe themselves as “locavores” because they eat locally produced food. While following a 100-mile diet can be challenging, many food activists think it’s worth it, for a variety of reasons, and an annual Locavore challenge is held by people around the world that partially promotes the 100-mile diet. miles.
In the United States, food can travel up to 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) to reach your plate. These travel miles are called “food miles” and have a profound impact on the environment, farming practices, and food quality. The issue of food miles became a popular cause in 2006, when several major supermarket chains pledged to reduce the food miles needed to get their groceries to the store, with a greater focus on local foods. Proponents of the 100-mile diet were an important part of putting this change into effect.
Food miles impact the environment because they translate into carbon emissions, thanks to the trucks, planes and ships used to transport them. They also play a role in farming practices, as farmers will engage in unsafe and dangerous practices when they know that the people who consume their food are unlikely to visit the farm. Many Third World countries have fewer restrictions on the use of labor and chemicals than the First World, which means that an American consumer buying strawberries from Chile may be contributing to child labor and the use of banned pesticides in the First World. world.
Finally, the food that must be sent is of lower quality. These foods are bred to be easier to transport, resulting in a decline in quality that is exacerbated by the practice of picking them before they are ripe, subjecting them to extreme temperatures, and dumping them in a supermarket where they can sit for weeks before buys.
Followers of a 100-mile diet believe that Americans are experiencing a profound disconnection from the source of their food, and would like to eat healthier foods while connecting with local producers. Under this diet, people learn more about the region they live in while foraging for food in the wild, meeting food producers, and connecting with the seasons as they learn what foods they can get during which seasons. A 100 Mile Diet also supports the local community, bringing businesses to local farmers and promoting farmers markets and community supported agriculture. Finally, many locals believe that this diet is healthier, because they eat fresh foods that are often sustainably grown, rather than ready-to-use foods. In the long run, it can also be cheaper, as consumers connect directly with producers, cut out the middleman, and avoid packaged foods, which tend to be more expensive.
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