Last year, I tried to keep up with Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon and their campaign to follow a 100–mile diet. I failed, by only blogging about parts one through five. Since then, parts six through eleven have been published, which can now all be found on the 100-mile diet website:
On the first day of spring 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon made a commitment to live for a full year on food and drink drawn from within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, British Columbia. The 100-Mile Diet was born — and response to the local-eating experiment was overwhelming.
“We heard from people as far away as Norway, France and Australia,” said MacKinnon. “This is what it’s like to witness the birth of a movement.”
Today, Smith and MacKinnon launched 100MileDiet.org, an online guide for anyone looking to dig into local eating. The site features a unique mapping tool to instantly find your own 100-mile ‘foodshed,’ tips for tracking down local markets and farms, unusual food facts, and the couple’s 11-part series on a year of local eating.
First published on TheTyee.ca, the 100-Mile Diet column attracted 40,000 readers and was linked, reprinted and blogged across the internet. The yearlong experiment has appeared in media from BBC Worldwide to Utne Magazine.
Smith and MacKinnon finished their one-year trial on March 20, 2006, but plan to continue to shop at farmers’ markets, tend their community garden plot, and preserve local foods for the winter. “We started the 100-Mile Diet because so many people feel disconnected from where their food comes from,” said Smith. “Now eating locally is a part of who we are, and we didn’t want to see it end.”
A book version of their adventure, The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, will be published in New York and Toronto in spring 2007.
