The 100-Mile vs Vegetarian Diets

Cin and I went grocery shopping two days back. We grabbed our canvas, reusable bags and drove our car-share car down to our local MegaMart that stocks everything from Ecuadorian Coffee to Yukon Salmon-in-a-can. As we wandered and sorted through our usual load of groceries (some of it local), we chatted about the 100 Mile Diet phenomenon described here. Looking in our shopping cart we find rice "packaged in Toronto" but likely grown in Asia somewhere, Tofu and Veggie Ham all the way from Vancouver BC (and again made from soy beans probably grown elsewhere), soy milk (same thing) and peanut butter. While all of our items were as green as we could get them (low packaging, vegetarian, etc.) they all required huge amounts of petrochemicals in the form of transportation and storage to get them to the end of our fork. What good is eating low-packaged items when the fuel required to get them to us uses far more petrochemicals then does the packaging of a local product? We needed to go greener. And the 100 Mile Diet may just do that. We set each other the challenge to move to a 100-Mile diet over the next year. Then, giddy with the heady excitement of a new challenge, we wandered around the store looking for our local fair.

And we encountered a huge problem. First, 100-Miles pretty much covers the extent of the map above. There are no soybeans (to my knowledge), nuts, or wheat grown in that radius. Being vegetarian, what will we do for protein? Do we go back to eating locally raised, ethically farmed meat? Despite the fact that its local, ethical and organic, it still takes more water and feed to raise a cow then it does to feed a human - the original reason we went vegetarian in the first place. Second, it's very difficult to tell what items in our local MegaMart are actually from within 100 miles. The packaging will label "Product of Canada", or "Packaged for XYZ Company of Toronto" or better, "Product of Ontario", but there's still no guarantee that the item wasn't grown somewhere else and shipped to a processing plant in Ontario.

In fact, we were unable to find a single protein source that wasn't shipped in from SOMEWHERE. Eventually we gave up. And feeling like the runner who challenges themselves to run a marathon, then hops in a cab right at the start to get to the finish line, we buggied our non-local, vegetarian food to the check-out line, paid for it, and scurried out to our car-share car. There we sat, staring out the windshield trying to figure out how we can get through this challenge - how to eat local AND vegetarian. This one will be tough. While I could probably go back to eating locally raised meat, I don't think Cin would be comfortable with that.

We decide that we'll have to take this challenge in little steps. We'll purchase local when we can, and either give up a few things if we have to. Or for the essentials, accept the petrochemicals associated with their production and transportation, and try not to feel too guilty as we chow down.