Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

One of the benefits of living in Salt Lake City is that it’s the kind of place that attracts people like nakedjen. She moved here last January and after seven months in the town, she knows it better than I do now. I was enjoying the joy of her company at the Geek Dinner last Thursday when she told me about eating locally. She posted her entry about her thoughts here:

• nakedjen: Eating Local, Eating Organic, Eating Well

This is the crux of her challenge to us all:

I want each of us to really think about the food on our plates. To be mindful of the food that we’re eating. To forge a relationship with it. To understand where it has come from, how far it traveled, the energy it took for it to get from the farm to our belly. Do you know that if each and every one of us ate just one local meal a week, just one, a meal that is purchased and prepared from foods found in season and locally, we would save, as a country, 1.1 million barrels of oil per week?

Could I do it? Could I eat locally grown food for just ONE meal a week? Sure, I could! That one meal a week would cost me a fraction more than it would have at the grocery store, but isn’t that worth saving THAT much in oil?

How would I do it? Well, in the summer, it’s easy. Our city had a local farmers’ market every Saturday where I could get locally grown food. In the winter, however, I would have to rely on Liberty Market, a small store that specializes in local and organic food. Depending on your town’s size, this may or may not be an option for you. Of course, the more rural you are, the more likely you’ll have access to people who grow food for a living.

Can you do it? Can you eat one locally grown meal a week?