The opposite of eating local

This weekend, upon flipping through my fiance's GQ magazine, I was astonished to find a three page article describing one man's experiment to try to obtain the exotic food that was "local" to his travels throughout Europe and Asia, in New York. To do this, he describes how he called Fed Ex and hired them to mail food from Malaysia and Italy to New York. He explains that he became accustomed to the food when he was abroad and cannot stand the typical "local and seasonal" foods and prices that were provided for him in restaurants. As a result, he began an experiment where he would contact restaurants abroad and order them to his home in NY. His criteria was that he would "only order foods that were distinctly of their place". Although certain retailers were willing to oblige his requests, the US government would not allow these products past customs. Those dishes that did pass this test were rotten by the time the author of this article was able to claim his meals.

While somewhat comical, this article describes one man's frustrations with the local food craze and his ridiculous attempts to rebel against it. I wonder how the "image" of local food either prevents or encourages people to participate in this "craze"? Would a changed approach to marketing the image of local food impact the willingness of certain people to be more inclined to buy it? Can local food be used to make exotic or non-North American foods? Would a pad Thai dish made with Canadian products satisfy the needs of local food?

I would argue that it would, but perhaps the local food movement has been trying too hard to preserve the authenticity of indigenous foods without exploring the possibility of using local products to make foods from abroad. Who knows, maybe the next big thing will be a Korean Kimchi restaurant or Greek Souvelaki chain that will make names for themselves by advertising only Canadian products!

Product of Canada?

Similar to the other members of Connect Farm, I too wonder what defines ‘local’. I made shortbread cookies for our class potluck with at least 50% of the ingredients being 'Products of Canada'. Decide for yourself if you think these cookies define ‘local’ or not. Here’s the recipe:

*1 lb. very soft unsalted butter
**2 ½ c. all purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
1 c. sugar

1. Preheat oven to 300*F
2. Mix butter and sugar first then, add the salt and flour.
3. Line your cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
4. Lightly press mixture into cookie sheet spreading the mixture to the edges. Make sure the mixture is in an even layer.

5. Place cookie sheet on the centre oven rack for 25-30 minutes.
6. Slice into squares as soon as they are finished baking. Do not wait for cookies to cool before slicing.

*Product of Canada, made with 100% Canadian milk
** Product of Canada

Although the flour is a product of Canada, I’m not sure where the wheat was cultivated nor do I know where it was processed into flour. Many labels are vague when identifying the whereabouts of our processed or packaged foods.

I would also like to know what constitutes a Canadian food product. The possibility that it’s grown on Canadian soil and outsourced to a manufacturing plant may not be a far-fetched assumption. However, since we are ingesting products that effect the way we think, feel, and live, don’t we have a right to know the route our food took to get to our table?

Locally Burlington!

Hello!
It is Tuesday and after my first day of observation at my practicum school, my parents took me out for dinner. So, for the month of practicum, I will be living at home in Burlington, therefore as much as getting free food is awesome, this assignment will be more difficult considering I really don't have much control over our groceries that are purchased. I talked to my mom about this and how I was involved in this project, and she mentioned that she does try to buy local food when she can like produce and poultry. For instance, for lunch today, my fruit was harvested in Ontario but then I went out for dinner and who knows where the 2 for 1 chicken wings came from.

I was thinking at the restaurant what I can do to somehow support something local since I did not know where the food was purchased. The best idea I came up with was drinking a beer or wine from some Micro Brewery from Toronto. Of course there were none available so instead of going for my normal Keith's, I got a Sleeman that is brewed in Guelph. That still raises the question of where all of the ingredients were obtained from.....but from what I have read so far on the internet (most?) ingredients are obtained from within Canada.
This project will be interesting and I think it will be beneficial while living in Burlington because I can educate my family more about what we are eating and discuss with them the social and environmental aspects that surround this issue. This is good instead of me just living by my self, I can educate three other people other than my self about this issue of local farming and supporting local farmers.
Anyways to conclude, I am going to have a lot of fun checking my labels when I make my lunch in the morning and trying as much as I can to accompany my mom at the grocery store and maybe head to the local market if I can.
Emma

Eating = essential to life. That's obvious, right? But shopping in a conventional supermarket can be a bore. It can also mean not having the pleasure of seeing where food comes from, who is growing it, and having a connection to the steps of the labour that goes into the miraculous moment of a carrot being ready for consumption.

For the last few years, I have bought the bulk of my food from the two farmers markets that happen weekly quite close to where I live, and it's brought a real pleasure to my doing the necessary duty of feeding myself. One of the things I like best is that I learn a lot about the land in Ontario, how the weather affected various crops, and what farmers did to troubleshoot variables. I also get to find out about what other people do with their food - recipe knowledge abounds! Food is medicine, in a very real sense, and this exposure to the source of food has broadened my knowledge of the food that I eat, it's compounds, and healing properties. And how to approach it in the kitchen, if I happen to be looking for inspiration.

My brother once said to me "Food has vibrations" - he meant that he actually felt food's energy, as if it were talking to him. At the time I was inclined to see him as willfully weird. But then I had to confess that Yes, his example that brown rice had a different 'energetic vibration' than quinoa, was true; i felt it too. And I thought, maybe getting in touch with what my body was saying it wanted was a really positive exploration, for health knowledge, and for the true enjoyment of eating my way to vivacity. I do believe that there is a particular harmony that happens between the body and local food, it's a symbiotic thing.

What is Local

Define “Local”

The phrase “buy local” is often associated with supporting the food production sector. There are many different reasons to purchase foods that have been produced locally.

1) Some people may be concerned with reducing their “carbon footprint” which is primarily an idea that reduces the distance that food travels from farmer to consumer and thereby reducing the amount of fuel used for transportation.

2) Other people may be interested in buying food that supports food production in areas that they consider to be of regional or national significance. Nationalism can be a positive influence on the food sector as members of various communities will go out of their way to buy from producers that they consider to be a part of their community. Conversely this policy can have and has had dangerous global implications. If nations decide to place high tariffs on imports in order to protect their producers (protectionism) other nations will do the same and the economic system of the world can begin to close. For greater historical context see The Great Depression.

3) A growing reason to buy locally is personal health. Food that is produced locally is not stereotypically associated with processed foods. Local food production has a number of words associated with it that are designed to show a purist and healthy form of food: “natural”, “fresh”, “clean”, “unprocessed”. The overall health benefits from a more natural diet are almost always positive.

If those are some of the reasons to buy locally produced foods then the definition of “local” will change according to each individual’s reason.

So what is local?

When a person living in Ontario wants apples and intends to “buy local” they have 14 varieties of apples grown within the province (according to www.onapples.com) to choose from, however, there are over 30 types of apples grown in North America. A consumer must ask themselves if they need a specific type of apple, and if so, is it grown “locally”? Is North America local enough? Should you buy Cortland apples from York Region if you live in Peel and Cortlands are grown in Peel? The answer depends on why you intend to buy local.

What if a person just wants to buy fruit and happens to prefer mangoes. Are apples a valid substitute for mangoes? If their intention is to lower their carbon footprint or support national production than perhaps it is a valid substitution. For culinary uses depending on the application, apples do not often substitute for mangoes. If they really want mangoes and believe in buying locally for the purposes of carbon footprint than a person in Canada may be forced to overlook Mexican mangoes for the Californian mangoes.

What about seafood. In Ontario the variety of “locally” produced seafood is very narrow in comparison to Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, B.C and other ocean coastal areas. So assuming that your moral and culinary compass allows you to eat seafood and you live in Ontario, where is seafood local? Is it local within Canada or North America?

There is another definition of “local” that has a growing significance in Canada. Many people in Canada are first or second generation Canadians and as such have a strong connection to their former nation. For nationalist reasons is it acceptable for these types of people to “buy locally” from their former nations of residence?

Local is an evolving word.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Local” as: In regard to place; in belonging to or existing in or peculiar to a particular place; of one’s own neighbourhood.

Regardless of your interpretation of local or reason for buying local this trend appears to be growing in public consciousness. To be aware of where your food originates and eat according to multiple moral and economic standards will hopefully have wide scale positive influence on our health, wealth and ecological happiness.

Teleportation, frosty bananas, and pineapple-apple pie! Oh my!

Ha! Eating local in Canada in October? We're nuts!

After our first meeting, I came home to size things up - to tally up the local food I already had. I checked the fruit bowl and found a dried up old kiwi and a lollipop. Do Kiwis grow in the Toronto area? Southern Ontario? Within a 500 Km radius? Anywhere in Canada? Wiki tells me the closest place that exported Kiwifruit in 2005 is eight little red dots in the North Eastern US - that's kinda close, no? Great. No luck there.

It did make me think about what our definition of local should be. I see it in two ways: the real way, and the "what if" way.

The real way, oddly enough, is more ideal. It's simple - we make the best possible choice. I don't want to make my crazy life more crazy than it already is. I'm not going to scour the streets looking for an independent supermarket that just happens to have a supplier from Milton who just happens to have just happened across a genus of banana that likes frost. Take the lobster example that came up in our discussions - Davin pointed out that the lobster in our markets comes from the Maritimes or the Caribbean. Choose Maritimes. It's about choices you make in your everyday life to support local farms. Make the extra effort to find what you consider to be local. If you can't get a hen to lay an egg in Parkdale, then I'm sure there's a chicken somewhere within a few dozen kilometres of Toronto who will be happy to plop one out for you. This is why we came up with the 50% rule - knowing that there's no way you're gonna find locally grown pineapple, but hoping you'll make an effort to chose Canada over Chile for that pineapple-apple pie.

Now for the "what if" scenario. What if we ran out of oil? Teleportation aside, how far could we go to get our food? I'm so out of shape I can't ride a bike in Toronto unless I'm going South. I'd be left eating crab apples off my neighbour's tree. The "what if" scenario is the extreme version of "local" and I hope it doesn't come to that 'cause there's only so many Pork Chops with Apple-Raisin Relish that I can handle.

I wonder where they made the lollipop?

(Stay tuned for next week, when you find out what's in my freezer and I share my friend's yummy October Soup recipe.)