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?

The “100 Mile Diet” is pretty much what it sounds like: you source everything you eat (or as much as possible) from within a 100 mile radius of your house, and, in many ways, it has become the poster child for eating like a TreeHugger. Because everything you eat (or, again, as much as possible) comes from your own neck of the woods, it makes some very tangible differences, like cutting way back on food miles — from an average of 1500 miles to less than 100 — and some less tangible ones, too, like forcing you (in a nice way) to really think about where everything you consume comes from, and helping you engage in mindful eating and consumption. As a follow-up to yesterday’s intro to green eating practices [www.sundancechannel.com], practicing the 100 mile diet is one way to green your food in a hurry, and TreeHugger has a slew of info on it. Here are some of the best.

1) We were first introduced to the idea [www.treehugger.com] a few years back (here’s part two [www.treehugger.com]), where we learned what some of the implications were for living on such a diet. These include both good things — fewer food miles, a palpable connection to our own food supply — and bad, like reduced selection, less variety and far less convenience.
2) Still, we liked the idea enough to hold a contest for a 100 Mile Thanksgiving [www.treehugger.com] (pictured below); after we gave them a cheat sheet, for the New York area, at least [www.treehugger.com] readers sent in their menus, and we were impressed by the winner’s [www.treehugger.com] ability to assimilate the contest with the tradition of the big meal.
3) The movement has gained enough traction among gourmets and foodies to have a name coined for those who practice it: locavores [www.treehugger.com]. Clever, don’t you think?
4) As the idea became less and less obscure, more and more people began needing more information; as such, the 100 Mile Diet website [www.treehugger.com] was born.
5) In the same vein, we found dinner party menus [www.treehugger.com] for 100-mile diets in four cities, helping to prove that it is indeed possible to follow the 100 mile rules and still have an entertaining, satisfying evening with friends.

6) Still, finding suitable food (and enough substitutions) is an ongoing challenge, but we have some ideas and resources [www.treehugger.com] to help combat this predicament.
7) TreeHugger even practiced what it was preaching, and had a little dinner gathering for some of its staff [www.treehugger.com] (pictured below) in Newport, Rhode Island; it was a perfect 100-mile meal, but it sure was fun!
If doing it yourself is still too intimidating or time-consuming, it’s good to know that at least you can still go out for a good, local meal; Harvest Restaurant [www.treehugger.com] and Konstam [www.treehugger.com] are just two of many, many examples of restaurants jumping about the 100 mile bandwagon.