This mission, if you choose to accept it, will be eaten with great gusto!

People in developed countries have so many food options that a trip to the grocery market can be a herculean exercise in quick decision-making. A huge quantity of the options in the market come from all over the world, sometimes having thousands of food miles attached to them. A food mile is a numerical indicator of how far food had to travel before it ends up in your local supermarket. Knowing that products with high food miles cause tremendous environmental impact, some people in the world have consciously tried to create a diet regiment called the “250 mile diet.”

The main idea behind this diet is that you eat nothing unless it was harvested and manufactured within 250 miles of your present location. Granted, 250 miles is a very hardcore objective to set, and even if you just limited yourself to food produced in the country you are in, you would still be making a major contribution to the fight against climate change. Nonetheless many people have succeeded in eating foods produced within a 250 mile radius.

In some cases, if you want to eat something like crackers, and depending on where you live, you may need to learn how to make crackers yourself; you could also not eat crackers and instead slice a french baguette into thin slices and use that. Basically you will have to learn how to research local farms and other fresh food producers in your area. Here are some suggestions on how you might go about doing that:

1) A directory can go a long way to helping you find out this information. There is an online website called Local Harvest [www.localharvest.org] that is helpful in finding farms.

2) You could also visit your local grocery marts and ask the manager if they get any of their food products from local producers.

3) Another great way to get to know your local food options is to go to a farmer’s market in your area. We have compiled a list of some farmer’s markets [www.sundancechannel.com] on Eco-mmunity Map, so feel free to check that out. Also, if you end up finding more farmer’s markets that were not listed in our map, we would love it if you created a map marker for the market on our map so that the next person in your area can easily find it on Eco-mmunity.

4) Another great way to get started would be to check out the blog of Leda Meredith, a woman who has pioneered the 250 mile diet with amazing success. Check out her blog here [ledameredith.net].

Thanks for checking out THE GREEN Blog. If you do try the 250 mile diet, even if you just experiment with it, please consider coming back here and making an Eco-mmunity map marker that chronicles your experiences with the 250 mile diet. If you give your marker a title of “250 Mile Diet: (Your City Name)” we will be featuring these markers in upcoming Greenzine mailing lists. Who says you can’t garner a super hero reputation by being green?