The 100 Mile Diet
The 100 Mile Diet is a relatively new diet that ensures that you always get to eat fresh and healthy food obtained locally, or to be more precise within a radius of 100 miles or 161 kilometers from your home. This new diet trend is increasingly becoming popular in the United States where people are more conscious about obtaining a healthy weight through healthy dieting.Origin of a New Diet
In fact, the new diet concept was evolved by a young Canadian couple Alisa Smith and J. B. Mackinnon while they were on a visit to their cabin in northern British Columbia during August 2004. Once the food supplies they carried from the city almost used up, the couple hunted for fresh food stocks in the neighborhood land. In the absence of their routine diet, Alisa and Mackinnon substituted their diet meals with wild mushrooms, Dolly Varden trout, apples, dandelion leaves, rose hips, sour cherries together with potatoes and garlic from their garden. Such healthy dieting impressed the couple so much that even after reaching home in Vancouver, they stuck to a diet comprising food available within 100 miles from their home for a year. Taking a cue from healthy dieting practiced by Alisa and Mackinnon, several Americans have now taken a liking to the 100 Mile Diet and begun describing themselves as ‘locavores’ as they only consume diet meals comprising local food. This new diet gained in popularity when numerous major supermarket chains in the United States decided to reduce the food miles to procure foodstuff for their stores and highlighted on the use of local and healthy foods for healthy dieting.Impacts of Food Miles
Normally, food travels over 1,500 miles or 2,414 kilometers before they reach the consumer’s plate. Such long transportation of food is known as food miles and they have a deep effect on the surroundings, farming performances as well as the standard of the foodstuff – all negating the concept of healthy food for healthy weight. While the environment impact of the food miles lead to carbon discharges from the planes, trucks and boats used to transport the food across distances. On the other hand, they also influence farming practices as, the peasants growing these food hundreds of miles away engage in hazardous and risky cultivation methods using deadly pesticides etc. knowing too well that the consumers would never ever visit their farms to learn the truth. Most importantly, foodstuffs that are shipped from distant places are usually of an inferior quality that can hardly be called healthy food. In fact, these foods are bred in a different way to suit shipment requirements. They are harvested unripe, subjected to intense temperatures and sent to the supermarkets where they remain on the shelves for days before being sold.Advantages of Local Foods
Alisa and Mackinnon and later the ‘locavores’ discovered that consuming local food was not only protected them from the impacts of the food miles, but also provided them with healthy dieting. People advocating the 100 Mile Diet assert that it enables the followers to learn about their region as they collect healthy food from the uncultivated lands, interact with the food producers and know about the farming practices and also become familiar with the seasons as they learn what foods to acquire in a particular time of the year. Most importantly, the new diet comprises healthy food as people are able to consume fresh and tasty food, instead of food stored in boxes. Besides, the 100 Mile Diet is also cheaper as there are no middlemen or transportation and packaging costs. Adopting this new diet also enables one to help his or her local economy. One of the major benefits of following the 100 Mile Diet is that it helps people to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight as the food they consume is less processed. The diet meals comprising local food also contain fewer toxins and hence, help people to avoid diseases, lose body fat and thereby lose weight.Getting Started
As the concept of the 100 Mile Diet is simple and offers a healthy dieting, the new diet is fast catching on among the Americans, Canadians, Australians and others virtually becoming the next frontier of healthy food. Here are a few dieting guides to help getting started with the 100 Mile Diet.- Begin Small: The 100 Mile Diet is a new diet concept and hence many are still skeptical regarding its effectiveness in ensuring healthy dieting. Therefore, it is advisable to start small with single diet meals a day for around a week. You may partner up your family in following the 100 Mile Diet.
- Be Flexible: Following the 100 Mile Diet does not essentially mean that you cannot eat anything apart from local healthy food. This is necessary as you cannot follow this new diet always, especially while travelling. So, you may very well visit a restaurant in a while or visit a friend for a sumptuous dinner. You may also be flexible while choosing your diet. For instance, if you are fond of specific food items that are not available locally, such as tea, coffee, beans etc., you may still have them.
- Browse the Internet: If you surf the Internet you will be amazed to find that so many healthy food items are produced in your locality that you were earlier not aware of. You may come across many neighborhood organic farms, local healthy food delivery services and even community kitchens where people convene to can locally produced foods.
- Set up a garden: One of the best ways to obtain local healthy food for healthy dieting is to set up a garden and grow them yourself. Even if you have a small space, you may grow tomatoes, herbs, vine beans and other vegetables for cheap and healthy dieting.
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