Today's Eco-Event: "Eat Local Challenge"
by Erin Courtenay - Madison, WI on 09.29.05
Got plans to eat out today? Even if you don't, consider taking part in the "Eat Local Challenge." Today 150,000 diners at corporate, university, and museum restaurants from Seattle to Washington D.C. can choose to eat a 100 percent locally grown meal, made entirely of ingredients from within 150 miles of the kitchen where they are served. Palo Alto-based Bon Appétit Management Company, the national food service provider which runs all of the restaurants, launched the challenge to raise awareness about where the food on our plates comes from.
The challenge, according to Bon Appétit, goes to the heart of the American diet. Bon Appétit has been a proponent of sustainably sourced foods since 1999, when the CEO issued a mandate to buy extensively from local farmers and artisans.
"The average item on an American dinner plate travels 1,500-2,000 miles, leading to loss of flavor in our food, and affecting our farmers' ability to grow a diversity of crops," said Fedele Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appétit. "At the height of harvest season, local foods are now at their peak of flavor. We can all keep our producers in business by buying from them, ensuring that our local food supply remains strong."
His chefs are taking the Eat Local Challenge seriously. In Portland, Ore., one chef decided to find a source for local salt. There was none, so he took his kids to the beach, gathered sea water, boiled it down, and made his own salt. Another chef found himself driving down a country lane in hot pursuit of a wheat combine to find a source for local wheat.
The Eat Local Challenge highlights the issue of 'food miles' - the distance food travels from the farm to the dining table - which environmentalists have described as the single most damaging factor to food quality and the environment.
"Our long-distance food habit devours tremendous amounts of oil, reduces food quality by necessitating the use of chemical preservatives, and makes us vulnerable to accidental or malicious disruptions to the food supply," said Brian Halweil, Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization in Washington, D.C., and author of Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. "As a national food service company, Bon Appétit feeds thousands of people every day. When they take a stand on eating locally, they send the message to other food companies that freshness and food safety are top priorities."
Founded in 1987 in San Francisco, Bon Appétit Management Company is an onsite restaurant company offering full food service management, with more than 190 restaurants and cafés in corporations, universities, and specialty venues in 26 states. Clients include Yahoo!, the Getty Center and American University. Bon Appétit is raising awareness of its sustainable sourcing practices through joint programs with Environmental Defense, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, and other organizations.
Obviously, this kind of advice betrays its geographical origin, primarily California where one could expect to find locally grown produce all year long. Try buying locally grown produce in the dead of winter in the midwest.
The good news is that there is a growing effort to help us upper midwesterners have better access to locally grown food year round. Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch are leaders in the four season growing movement; local farmer's markets are offering year round markets w/ root veggies, apples and preserved harvest; and, local meat and dairy are available all year. Californians may have more options, but that's no reason not to help support our own local growers year round.
I was hoping to find a lookup table for the 150,000 diners, universities, etc. so I could go out and eat a local meal tonight. Does anybody know of a website that provides this info? It would certainly make the "Eat local challenge" less challenging.
During a NH winter we just chew on twigs and bark and drizzle maple syrup on snow cones.
You're absolutely right, Chris - near impossible to find where to get this food. Looks like this list of the clients may help (also, I think its 150,000 "eaters" not establishments).
http://www.bamco.com/website/dream_clients.html
I have a "root cellar" in my attached garage. Its a big cooler where I keep garden cabbages, squash, potatoes, etc until well into January. City dwellers above 2nd floor can do the same on a veranda or porch. Try putting whole tomatoes in your freezer. Spread them out until hard, then store frozen in a bag. For a sauce stew or soup, place in tap water and the skins slough right off. Buy now while veggies are on sale and store for late fall/winter. That's basically what the Califoria packing houses do! THe difference is that they monitor humidity and displace oxygen in their coolers with pure nitrogen. It is possible for non-California producers of local grown to build their own packing house and distribution systems locally. I think its a pre-determined outcome.
Fresh tomatoes shouldn't be refridgerated: it ruins their flavor and texture (temperatures below 50F turns off the dexenal in them, one of the main flavor components of tomatoes).
Personally, I think this "150 miles" thing makes a fetish of locality rather than, I don't know, practicality and reasonableness. Perfectly fine for California and the rest of the country in late summer and early fall, when the harvest is coming in, especially as a one-off event. But let's see them try this for, say, all of February in the Midwest: I'm entirely uninterested in eating potatoes and beans for months at a time.
His chefs are taking the Eat Local Challenge seriously. In Portland, Ore., one chef decided to find a source for local salt. There was none, so he took his kids to the beach, gathered sea water, boiled it down, and made his own salt
What? Isn't the whole Eat Local thing about saving energy? How much sea water did he have to boil away to get say 1lb of salt? how much energy did he have to use for that?
Isn't the right thing to do is use the most EFFICIENT method for doing things? Even if that means driving something in?
I think that he was making a point by not even using spices from out of his area! If we all took this seriously, then there might be a booming "cottage industry" for sea salt in Portland!! It would also mean we make a greater attempt to find ways to locally preserve out of season fruits & veggies as suggested above. Kudos!!