Unabashed

This was cross-posted from my [Re]Evolver blog.

The folks over at Eating Alabama are wrapping up their year-long experiment in which they eat only food harvested in their home state of Alabama. Evidently, such a thing is possible, and makes a lot of sense from a sustainability perspective. If more people ate only local food, it could decrease pressure on the environment, minimizing destructive farming habits which range from ocean trawling to rainforest depletion. If you live in a system based on the supply and demand model, then the only sure way to reduce these types of environmentally-damaging methods of food production is to reduce your demand. If fewer people demand, for instance, Alaskan king salmon, then more king salmon will thrive in the wild because there will be less pressure on producers to ensure their supply meets the demand; even less demand might even result in a scaleback of ocean trawling, a process which strips entire ecosystems of vitality. Simple, right? Not to mention the costs of transporting food from one place to the next. Think of how much it costs to simply tansport Alaskan snow crab legs to markets in Florida–which they do, quite regularly, to meet the demands of the consumer–when Florida itself is in the center of two oceans, one of the richest seafood environments on Earth! Sure, maybe you can’t get Alaskan snow crab legs harvested locally in Florida, but you can get lobster tail (no, not Maine lobster, but a damn fine lobster I must say having sampled it myself on numerous occasions) and a wealth of other delicious seafood.

And that’s not even considering the impact that eating locally can have on local farmers, farmers’ markets, local businesses, and even better, the impact it can have on your own overall health. Eating locally means eating more whole foods, eating less additives like MSG and the ultimate evil: high fructose corn syrup. Once you start eating locally, you might even be surprised at how much better your food tastes.

The Eating Alabama blog has a wealth of information about locally grown food that’s applicable no matter where you live. They do spotlight local farms and produce, but they also have recipes, information on specific types of foods and tons of other information.