Affordability and Eating Local
One of the challenges of eating local aside from seasonality and geography is cost. In his interview with Anne E. McBride on Leite's Culinaria Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, reiterates a point he makes in the book:
"There is definitely a class issue here. To do the right thing, when it comes to food choices, takes more money, there's no question about that. It's one of the biggest problems we face. But there are a lot of Americans — more than half, I would say — who have the wherewithal to spend a little bit more money on better food choices. I think, in a large part — certainly for my audience, probably for your audience —, it's a matter of priority rather than affordability. . ."
Our friends at Eat Local Challenge are putting this to the test with the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge, to find out if it's possible to eat locally within an average American family food budget, without going through the exercise of a household budget's re-prioritization. Those choosing to participate in the challenge taking place April 23-29 will be attempting to stick to budgets based on statistics from the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistic. I won't be participating this time around, but I'll certainly be following along to see how the participants fare.
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7 Comments:
It's "eat locally" unless you're a canibal.
Lou at 11:40AM on 03/24/07
No Lou, then it would be "eat locals".
Lia Bulaong at 3:18PM on 03/24/07
That would be if you ate more than one local. Compare "man eats local" to "man eats locally". It would be right to say "eat local food", since local is an adjective, but not right to say "eat fine" or "eat rare". My god, I have to get a life.
Lou at 4:14PM on 03/24/07
Lou, "local" is understood to be a shortcut for "food grown locally" just like "organic" is used for "food grown organically". I'm generally all for linguistic pedantry, but you're in the wrong here.
Lia Bulaong at 5:29PM on 03/24/07
Lia,
I understand and follow your logic, but I simply do not agree. "Local" is certainly not understood by me to mean "food grown locally". And I have not been accused of pedantry since early this morning (please excuse me for starting a sentence with a conjunction}. Using an adjective as an adverb is just wrong.
Strunk and White be with you.
Lou at 6:10PM on 03/24/07
"not understood by me"
Therein lies the problem! Some things you just have to accept and move on from, and this is one of them.
Lia Bulaong at 6:42PM on 03/24/07
I'll try. Thanks.
Lou at 6:48PM on 03/24/07