Why Join the 100 Mile Diet Challenge for 2007?

When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. On the first day of spring 2005, a couple from Vancouver, British Columbia, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver. See how they did it at www.100milediet.org.

This September, a growing movement of citizens in the Capital District of New York State, concerned about eating healthier, supporting local farmers, creating a secure food supply, and saving energy, will do the same. The short term goal of this project is to build people’s awareness of where their food comes from and how much energy it takes to grow, process, and ship food to your local grocery store. The long-term goal is to build support for local farmers and merchants, in an effort to build a stable and secure food supply. Will you join us?

The 100 Mile Diet and Peak Oil
Many experts think the world will reach peak oil in the near future, in which world oil production begins an irreversible decline, while demand for energy continues to increase. Fossil fuels are intimately involved in our food supply. Most of the food in the supermarket is shipped here from hundreds, even thousands of miles away. Check this out for yourself the next time you're in the supermarket. Peak oil/natural gas means expensive and/or scarce oil and natural gas with attendant disruptions in the price and supply of materials derived from those fuels. Modern agriculture uses fossil fuels for making fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides. Oil is used in working the farm and shipping the food to processors and supermarkets.

By eating local food, we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and help protect ourselves from disruptions in our food supply.The first step is getting people to think about where their food comes from. The 100 MILE DIET CHALLENGE is designed to do just that and have some fun at the same time.