The 100 Mile Diet Challenge comes to an end

By Mary Stockdale



A group of festive ‘locavores’, or eaters of local food, gathered recently to mark the end of their 100 day, 100 Mile Diet Challenge. This was celebrated with homemade eggnog and hot apple cider, and a range of Christmas treats, from pastries filled with homemade jam to mince tarts made from green tomatoes. They also made their own Christmas wreaths featuring such 100 Mile components as cedar and fir boughs, oregon grape clippings and bright red high-bush cranberries.

The 100 Mile Diet Challenge was launched at the Interior Provincial Exhibition in early September by two local groups: the Food Action Society of the North Okanagan (FASNO) and the Armstrong Community Food Initiative (ACFI). These groups challenged people in the North Okanagan to eat food that has been produced or processed within a 100 mile radius of home. Fortunately for those of us in the North Okanagan, this is a geographic area that encompasses the fertile Okanagan Valley, the hardy west Kootenays, and the beef rangelands around Merritt, Kamloops and Cache Creek.

The 100 Mile Diet is a creation of two Vancouver-based writers, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, who decided to eat only food that was produced within a 100 mile radius of their home for one year. Their example, described in a best-selling book, has inspired thousands of individuals, and even whole communities, to change the way they eat. The reasons cited for eating more local food range from economic: buying from local businesses has a ‘multiplier effect’ on the entire local economy; to environmental: it reduces greenhouse gas emissions caused by the transportation of food; to health: fresher food is much better for people; to taste: it also happens to be far more delicious. 

Of particular note is the need to support local farmers, whose livelihoods are threatened by the globalization of food supplies. In the North Okanagan, the average age of farmers is 54 years, meaning that if people don’t start buying more local food, there might soon be none available for them to buy, which is not at all a secure situation for our region to be in.

A total of one hundred and fifteen people signed up to follow a diet ranging from the ‘Gold’ standard of 100% local food, to ‘Silver’ at >75%, to ‘Bronze’ at >50%. They accessed local food from local shops, farmers’ markets, vegetable box delivery programs, farm gates or by growing it themselves. In the final weeks of November and December, access to local produce gets much more difficult, and people learned, or re-learned, to preserve food by dehydrating, canning, freezing and root cellaring.

At the final Christmas gathering, people reflected on what they had learned from taking part in the 100 Mile Diet. Their thoughts included: ‘It takes more time and planning, but it is so much more satisfying’; ‘I learned much more about what was NOT available - no local cooking oil, and limited grains and dried beans’ and ‘Eating seasonally, especially in winter, means using more recipes from our pioneering days and from northern and eastern Europe’. 

Many people plan to go on eating more local food, and are already planning how they will plant their gardens next year, and improve on the way in which they will put food by.

For more information on FASNO and the 100 Mile Diet Challenge, see www.foodaction.ca.