The Hundred Mile Diet

For those of you who do not know what this is I will explain. In essence this diet requires the participant to only eat food that has been produced within 100 miles (or 100km if you are Canadian) from where one resides. The diet is a response to how we treat our planet. If we only consume and use products that are locally grown and manufactured then we reduce our carbon footprint. As for food we also keep valuable agricultural land as agricultural land which reduces the possibility of land being bulldozed to create another big box parking lot for the next Home Depot or Wal-Mart. My wife and I try to run our lives within this ideological framework. For our personal consumption we buy food products that are grown as close to Toronto as possible.

Now the question arises about our product. Obviously our olive oil is produced much further away than 100 miles. We produce in Greece and ship over to Toronto. To reduce the expense and the magnitude of our carbon footprint we bottle our oil here in Toronto. This way we require a much smaller amount of space on the ship, train and trucks used to ship over the oil. Yes a small amount of product requires this much transportation infrastructure. As for the bottles (as anyone familiar with our earlier troubles trying to find bottles would know) it was a very difficult process trying to find someone willing to sell us a pallet. Anyway we did at the end. The bottles are locally produced and we bottle the product here at home. We are very proud of our small network, and our attempt to keep our carbon footprint as small as possible. However, we still feel like we need to do something more for our planet. Our discussion has been to buy carbon offsets. Continued next blog.