Food Network’s 100 Mile Challenge – A return to simpler times?
It’s been a few days since I watched Food Network’s newest program “The 100 Mile Challenge” and yet there’s some lingering thoughts that the concept of the show has brought to mind. For those who didn’t watch it, the premise of the show is following a group of families who have volunteered to only eat produce that was grown/bred within a hundred mile radius of their home for a period of 100 days. To give you an idea of what this implies, for those living in North America, this would mean no coffee, no sugar, and no chocolate to name just a few. Although there are tangible benefits to such an approach to food consumption, there is an interesting sociological implication that arises from this in regards to what our society’s relationship with food might be down the road. But before I get into that, let’s look at this concept and the benefits it derives.
The idea behind this show stems from the “100 Mile Diet” experiment created by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon in 2005 where they only consumed locally grown food for a whole year. While they took this on as a personal challenge, it has since become a source of inspiration for others in taking a closer look at what they were eating and especially where it came from. As the plan’s creators pointed out during the premiere episode of “The 100 Mile Challenge”, there are numerous advantages to taking on such a lifestyle approach to what foods we eat, such as supporting the local economy by purchasing foodstuffs from small farms at local markets as well as decreasing our carbon footprint by reducing the demand for food to be transported across the country or from overseas (on their web site, they point out that one study found that a local diet uses 17 times less oil and gas than a diet that relies on foodstuffs shipped from outside the region). This would even have an impact on the international level by causing a decline in consumption of such cash crops as coffee and sugar, reducing the amount of critical biomass sectors being destroyed to make way for more farming acreage.
Of course, despite these obvious benefits, it is still a dramatic shift from the way our society consumes food, even if we just consider what measures would be required to eat only local fare. For example, in recent years, we’ve become accustomed to being able to eat certain fruit such as berries and apples year-round. Under a local-only diet, we’d need to restrict what types of food we eat to the season in which it grows, or at least to those items that we can preserve during those cold winter months. However, as Smith and MacKinnon point out, the advantage here is that it not only reconnects us with understanding where our food comes from, but because of its freshness, there’s less of a need for using chemical preservatives. As you can see, the arguments for a local-fare only diet become fairly convincing; even Dr. David Suzuki commented on this subject saying that “eating locally isn’t just a fad like the various diets advertised on late-night TV. It may be one of the most important ways we save ourselves and the planet”.
And yet, the problem with this idea is that it overlooks the fact that food consumption is as much a cultural determinant as language is, and as such, cannot be so easily cast aside for economic/environmental benefit. In Canada, we take pride in the multicultural fabric that exists in our society, of the integration of various ethnicities, cultures, faiths, and customs into the overall social makeup of our country. Thanks to the diversity of cultures that comprise the country’s populace, we’ve seen a growth in diversity of foodstuffs being offered in main grocery chains, not only in terms of spices, but also fruits, vegetables and even meat. In many ways the introduction of these novel and unique foodstuffs from the Asian, Middle Eastern and African parts of the world to the North American food scene is reminiscent of the introduction of European fare to this continent as the development of the land progressed. For such palates that are used to the regular consumption of spices, exotic fruits and vegetables, and even basic grains like rice or flour to make various bread types, the notion of forgoing these basic staples in their diet simply wouldn’t fly, nor should it since the introduction of these new foodstuffs is to the benefit of all us to gain a better appreciation for the diversity of preparations and applications that can be done with a few common ingredients.
The other interesting aspect regarding the growing popularity for this approach to food consumption is how its running counter to what is now occurring in what we still refer to as the “developing world”, specifically Africa and Asia. In many countries found in these regions of the world, there is an expanding growth in the urbanization of their population bases as people move from farming communities to urban centres. Concurrently with such population shifts comes the rise in purchasing power and with it, the rise in demand for more sophisticated and higher quality products, including the variety and selection of foodstuffs being offered.
Indeed, in a recent article in “Scientific American”, they pointed out how the chocolatier company Hershey is currently trying to find an alternative to the confectioner’s glaze that they coat their candy products with (the glaze is used to provide a nice sheen to the candy as well as increase its shelf life up to 12 months). The reason – the current confectioner’s glaze is created from an amber-coloured resin called lac that is secreted by tiny scale insects that feed on tree sap and during the collection of this resin, dead insect bodies unavoidably get mixed into the glaze. While that hasn’t been an issue in North America and Europe (well, at least for those who are unaware of this fact), it is a problem if companies like Hershey want to sell their products in India where 30% of the population are strict vegetarians. With a population of about 300 million consumers and a market for chocolate that is expected to have an annual growth of 12% over the next five years, it’s no question that this is a problem Hershey and other candy manufacturers need to address to tap into this lucrative market.
Taking into account this continued shift in both industry and services toward the Asian, African and Middle Eastern markets thanks to their growth in urbanization and purchasing power, the rise in popularity for such local-fare only diets as the “100 Mile Diet” in communities across North America is a curious occurrence in how it echoes a return to a more agrarian society, one where the population lives off its own land and forgoing any natural resources found elsewhere. Personally, I think as with anything in life a balance can be reached between these two approaches to how we choose what we eat. There’s no question that the distribution of foodstuffs heavily skews in favour of North America and Europe at the expense of other parts of the world. But the response to this shouldn’t be a restriction of food consumption to local fare; instead, we should shift the ratio to favour mostly locally grown produce balanced against a complement of foodstuffs grown elsewhere to diversify both our diet and palates. Indeed, I suspect that with the growth overseas for more tantalizing and exotic foods, some of the items we take for granted here could very well end up being served as delicacies on someone else’s plate halfway around the world.
In the end, what this all comes back to is what kind of relationship we wish to have with the food we eat, an issue I addressed in a previous article. Smith and MacKinnon have made it clear that one of their objectives in creating the “100 Mile Diet” is to get people back in touch with understanding not only what they’re eating, but how it’s grown. In light of the numerous food product recalls we’ve seen over the last year, that’s something consumers should be taking more time to learn about and consider when making choices about what they eat. Without question, by becoming more aware of the farming practises used to bring the food we eat to our tables, consumers can make the right choices in choosing food that not only makes a smaller impact on our environment, but also on their personal health. By leveraging our purchasing power, we can push for change that allows us to both appreciate the bounty that our nearby farming neighbours have toiled to provide us, but also food that was grown and cultivated in distant lands while ensuring a respect for the environment. Striking that kind of a balance would be to the benefit of everyone.
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