In the last post, “Seasonality saves cost,” I discussed the economic and environmental benefits of eating within the seasons. I wanted to share this perspective to highlight an important piece to meal planning and eating locally grown foods. Today I want to further examine the complexity of eating locally-sourced, seasonal foods. The impetus for today’s discussion grows out of a response I received from a friend on this post (via Facebook):

I like the recipe…but the problem with the 100mile diet is that it only works for people in nice countries with good climates. large parts of many countries would see their nutrition suffer horribly if they followed such a rule. for example, my father grew up with a (wartime enforced) 100 mile diet. as a result, he has no memory of eating fruit at any point in his childhood, and rarely did they have greens- they just couldnt grow so far north. given the poor conditions, life expectancy was low, and my father lost all his teeth by his early 20s. a 100 mile diet is fine if you live in a temperate place like portland, but what if you live in northern scotland? or siberia?
and if all people in rich countries followed a 100 mile diet- what would happen to the farmers in south america, africa and asia whose lives depend on the ability to export their produce to wealthy markets?

In response I wrote,

If the concept of nutrition is universal, we cannot expect the means to this end to be as well. Your right to argue that different countries have different climates, but maybe places where fruit does not “naturally” grow should not have fruit. Indigenous people survived all around the globe on diets we Westerners would not consider “nutritious.” The food pyramid re-enforces a globalized food system even though this is devastating to the environment. Our expectations for a “well-rounded diet” contradicts the natural growing cycles. To provide these foreign foods, farmers must either use GMOs or continue monoculture farming, which has a greater yield but requires chemicals, destroys ecosystems and increases the spread of illnesses related to pollution. The farmers in other countries might make money by exporting their produce, but to keep up with growing demand they have to revert to harmful means of food production. I think the question becomes, what systems must we drastically reform or completely destroy so that the populations on this planet are not completely devastated by climate change?

There are a number of issues in this brief dialogue, and many of them have gotten me thinking about this ideal of locality.

My friend’s comment suggested the following three problems:

1. Geographic inequality
2. Nutrition and health
3. The globalized food system

In my response (above) I tried to tackle each of these concerns, but I do not think I gave justice to the issue. Because this is a common and yet substantial criticism of the local food movement, I hope to provide an expanded response to her questioning. In this post specifically, I want to discuss the issue of “geographic inequality.”

When I read the first few lines of her comment I immediately thought of Jared Diamond and his popular/controversial work, Guns, Germs and Steel. Although I’ll admit that I have not read the book, I have taught his ideas through some educational resources created on his work. PBS produced a series of informative video clips that summarize his main arguments. At the time I was teaching middle school students, and the videos and lesson plans were far more helpful than the actual text. From the website, here is a synopsis of his argument:

Jared Diamond’s basic theory is that some countries developed more rapidly than others and were able to expand and conquer much of the world because of geographic luck. The natural resources available to them coupled with the native species and climate provided by their geography led them to become more agricultural and less reliant on hunting and gathering for sustenance. This agrarian lifestyle, in turn, allowed for the development of “specialists” within the civilization who could work on developing and perfecting the technologies necessary to make these civilizations more profitable, stronger, and more powerful than others around them. Diamond asserts that those living in temperate climates with indigenous animals that could be domesticated were more likely to develop advanced civilizations.

Many historians disagreed with Diamond’s work and his broad perspective on world history. Since Diamond is a scientist and not a historian, his interpretation of the research conflicts with historians studying similar periods in time. That said, I find his argument intriguing and very persuasive.

Returning to my friend’s comment, I think Diamond’s ideas on “geographic luck” speak to her criticisms. Different climates yield different crops and the distribution of climates affects what can be grown and domesticated in a given place. The result is not that one climate has “better” foods than another. Rather, different climates enable a larger or smaller diversity of crops. My friend contends that temperate places like Portland enable the population to sustain itself on local foods, whereas countries like Scotland prevent inhabitants from growing food year round, let alone have access to fruits and many vegetables. For me, this fact reinforces the need for 100-mile diets and taken further, relearrning native species and foraging techniques.

An important factor to the 100-mile diet is connecting to one’s region, one’s physical sense of place. More than finding farmers markets, to eat local we must begin to understand the ecosystems in our part of the world. As I have said in other posts, foraging is the rawest means of finding and distributing food from a particular place. I recognize that everyone will not stop shopping and dive into foraging. And yet, I do think people need to identify native species in their region and re-establish the geographic attributes that make that place unique. There is a reason why some foods survive in one climate over another; and there is a reason why native people were able to survive on these seasonal foods. The “well balanced-diet” had nothing to do with a food pyramid and had everything to do with the changing seasons. Groups living in a variety of climates around the world found a way to survive in the harshest of environments. Did they all live to their mid-80s? Probably not. (I will discuss the role of nutrition and health in the 100-mile diet in the next post.)

There is a reality that harshly confronts my idealistic comments – overpopulation and the depletion of resources. It is true that at one time in history people could survive off the native plants and animals in a given place. But as populations increase it will get more difficult to feed all people the same diet. If the expectation is that all people deserve the same variety of fruits and vegetables as we get here in America, we are surely on our way to a more synthetic culinary experience (i.e. GMOs and processed foods.) If, on the other hand, communities reconnect with their land and climate, we can slowly return to a sustainable means of healthy food.

This afternoon, while searching through my favorite blogs, I came across a book review. The book, Fat of the Land:Adventures of a 21st Century Forager by Langdon Cook, is a perfect example of this shifting need. I think the beauty of foraging, which Cook shares in this book, is the opportunity to make regional foods special again. For example, one can purchase clams at any number of markets or grocery stores, but when you take the time to forage clams yourself, the process makes you appreciate the ‘specialness’ of that meal. In other words, when we have to work for our food we no longer take it for granted. In today’s world, among the cuisines of the West, we take our food for granted. We expect fresh ingredients from all over the world at any time we fancy. We do not question how these foods are produced, nor do we consider how far they traveled. And we hate to think about the long-term environmental impacts of certain foods we purchase at the store or market.

If it’s not clear yet, let me state this simply: the globalized food systems we take for granted need to be abolished. We do not need bananas in Portland and the Scots don’t need oranges. The nutrients we need as a species are found in many wild and domesticated plants and animal meats. Will some people live longer than others, maybe. Let the length of our lives not be determined by access to hospitals but by the nourishment of the foods we eat. In this issue of local foods, geographic inequality exists. Until the global food system collapses, let us begin to treat fruits, fish and other foreign delicacies as delicacies and not take nature’s bounty for granted.

Related posts:

1. The 100-Mile Diet vs. World Hunger (part 2)
2. The 100-Mile Diet vs. World Hunger (part 3)
3. The Menu Consultant
4. Cuisines of the World Potluck – Denmark
5. The Elimination Diet and a Cleanse

Tags: Food Politics, foraging, local food movement, Nutrition, seasonal eating