Perhaps you have already heard of the 100-Mile Diet, a fad which stemmed from the book of the same title written by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon.  In their book, Smith and Mackinnon write about restricting their diet for one year to foods grown within a 100-mile radius from their home, all in the name of sustainability.  The book quickly became a bestseller and resulted in many people attempting to emulate this endeavour.

I like the idea of eating locally grown foods, and I’m in the school of people who believe that organic foods taste better and are generally healthier.  At the same time, however, I really have a problem with the overly idealistic concept of restricting my diet to these foods. 

For starters, grocery stores don’t carry very much in the way of locally produced goods.  So where do you obtain local food? Well, there are farmers markets which, depending on where you live, are generally held one or two days a week.  Other than that, it’s a matter of going straight to the source.  That means you have to drive from one small local food producer to the next in order to obtain everything you need and since the whole idea behind the 100 mile diet is to eat in a more sustainable manner, this just seems ridiculous.  How can hundreds of people driving to multiple locations be sustainable?

A second problem I have with the 100-Mile-Diet is that I actually don’t think it’s very healthy, and while I'm all for being more green, I don't think it should be done at the expense of your health.

In the book, Smith and Mackinnon were far more limited than before in terms of the selection of fruits and vegetables available to them; they had no access to rice or cooking oils.  Luckily for them, they did happen to live on the Canadian west coast, a place where fresh food is abundantly available both from local producers and from Mother Nature herself. This being the case, they were overall pretty well off. 

But few hundred mile stretches are as bountiful as the Canadian west coast, and while I’m sure one could sustain a reasonable level of health, there are bound to be certain areas of a person’s diet that would become overlooked as a result of following this diet.  One example is seafood.  We all know that fish is a major source of many important nutrients, and unless you live within 100 miles of an ocean, you lose all the health benefits of fresh seafood.

The last problem I have with the 100-Mile-Diet is that the amount of energy and time that a person must invest in order to actually eat only locally produced food for an entire year is gargantuan.  I am not simply referring to the time it takes to drive around from location to location in order to fulfill all your dietary requirements, what I am really talking about is winter.  In order to abide by the rules of this diet for an entire year, participants are required to have the resources available to them that are necessary to create a sufficient supply of preserved food throughout the winter months.  Who in this society has that kind of time? 

I believe that the idea behind the 100-Mile-Diet is a good one, and I’m not trying to say that I see anything wrong with making an effort to eat locally grown food.  In fact, I love the idea of supporting my local food-producer.  I do feel, however, that those who participate in the diet are not contributing to a more sustainable world in any way whatsoever.  In my next article, I'll discuss ways you can change your diet that I believe are sustainable and intelligent alternatives to the 100-Mile-Diet.

Click Here to View Articles Written by Allison