Carol Ness of the SF Chronicle explains the Pennywise Eat Local Challenge: It's a new wrinkle in the Eat Local Challenge, started two years ago by a small group of Bay Area women -- the Locavores. They issued an online call to people to spend one month trying to eat only foods from within 100 miles of where they live -- their foodshed.That doesn't mean buying breads, say, from a nearby bakery -- it means trying to find breads made from flour ground from wheat grown within 100 miles (impossible in the Bay Area, by the way).Ideally, every ingredient in every mouthful eaten for the month should come from the local foodshed -- down to the last grain of...
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Not all farmers' markets in the UK are certified or monitored, and so if you're visiting one caveat emptor definitely applies—the produce you buy may not be any better than what you get at the supermarket: Consider, for example, Isle of Wight Tomatoes, one of the most established stallholders at London’s numerous farmers’ markets. It looks like a small, traditional enterprise and claims to sell its own homegrown produce. Think again. Its tomatoes, aubergines and cucumbers are bought from a separate company, Wight Salads, the bulk of whose £60m turnover comes from supplying supermarket chains.Worse, as far as many green consumers may be concerned, many of the tomatoes are actually experimental genetic crossbreeds that Wight Salads is engineering to try...
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A couple in Manhattan is living "No Impact" for a year, which means eating only organic food grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan, composting in their apartment, and no carbon-fueled transportation. Oh, and did I mention no paper, and that includes the toilet variety? They've been making vinegar at home from fruit scraps, and shopping at the Union Square Greenmarket. On one hand, Manhattan seems like a great place to do attempt this experiment. You can walk to so many places, or use a scooter or skateboard or roller blades. On the other hand, eschewing elevators means walking 115 flights of stairs in one day, which is what one participate estimates he did! The idealist in me loves to...
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