Food Tracking: Wrap Up Comments

Thanks, everyone, for hanging with me through this week.  It was interesting to write down what I ate.

I wanted to clear up one thing first:  This was just an attempt to write down what I eat on a regular basis - to see how close I come during normal, everyday life to eating locally and sustainably. 

Overall, I would say that in my everyday life, the good guys win at the end of the day.  Every day is sprinkled with some good things and a couple bad things.  But each day that I wrote, I would say that the good guys won out over the bad guys.

The restaurant eating is a frustrating thing.  Even in a town like San Francisco, your best bet for eating locally and sustainably is to cook for yourself.  Of course there are many exceptions, but they are not every day exceptions.   I need to get better at asking people exactly what ingredients are in food.  For instance, on day seven:  It would have been completely legitimate for me to ask the falafel guy where he gets his ingredients, but I didn't.

Just on a diet note:  I realized this week that I need to eat more green veggies!  I was actually fairly surprised by that.  I would say that this week was a little more protein heavy than I usually eat, but there really didn't seem to be many veggies in there.

The Chronicle today had a lengthy article about eating locally and a group of women who are challenging themselves to eat within a 100-mile radius* for the month of August.  Good timing!   Start thinking about whether you would be willing to try some part of this challenge for the month.  You would be able to set your own paramenters and the challenge can be whatever you choose:  eating locally one day a week, one meal a day, etc.  I am going to be posting a challenge to any of you who wish to participate -- for those of you who have a blog, I will be posting a meme in the next few days discussing it. 

* The 100-mile radius, I suspect, comes from Gary Paul Nabhan's excellent book Coming Home to Eat.  Thanks to everyone who posted about this book.  I read it a year or two ago, and it was one of those life-altering books for me.   The amazing thing that Nabhan did was to try and commit to eating foods native to his area.  That would be many times more difficult than even trying to eat local.  So let's just stick to local for the moment - that will be an amazing start.

Read the food tracking series:

Intro
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8

Comments

[alan]

This was a fascinating series to read, and one that has made me turn a more critical eye to my own eating habits. I look forward to the upcoming meme. The availability of local and/or organic options around me is quite limited, but I have hope.

[Barbara Fisher]

I would be glad to participate in your meme--since I try very hard to support local farmers and food producers anyway, it will be fun to share that experience with others trying to do the same.

It is easy for me--I live in a fairly rural area surrounded by small farms in a community that is committed to sustainablity. I realize that not everyone lives in such a place. However, part of the reason I live here is -because- I chose to come here in part because of that community committment to sustainable agriculture.

Because of that choice of where to live--I would say that my husband and I are eating locally more so than ever, and as people come to eat at our place, they, too, are inspired to eat more locally as well.

[Farm Groupie]

What a great challenge! We do our best to eat at least half of all our food from local sources. I think that it's great to inspire other people to do the same. One of the best things about eating locally is getting to know the producers in your area. Farmers are really great people. I live in the heart of suburbia, and I think that if we in suburbs or urban areas can connect with those who grow food in outlying areas, we can really help fight sprawl and connect with each other.

www.justfood.org is a great group doing just that!

Gary Paul Nabhan really inspired me to try to do what he did in his book. I also loved Joan Dye Gussow's book and have tried to grow more of my own food, too.

It's work, but it's delicious!