2.1: Reading- The 10-Mile Diet

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Before You Read

Can you guess what the 100-mile diet might be? Choose the best ending for the following sentence.

People who follow a 100-mile diet _____.

a) are willing to travel up to 100 miles to find their favourite foods

b) only eat food that has been produced within 100 miles of their home

c) can’t find good food within 100 miles of where they live

d) buy food that lasts a long time, so they can travel 100 miles with it

The Reading

Read about the 100-mile diet. As you read, use a piece of paper to cover the lines. Read each line at a time. When you see the word STOP, you need to pause. Don’t look ahead! Try to guess what is coming. Jot down your ideas in the spaces provided.

1 Do you live in British Columbia? Can you imagine living without coffee? Chocolate? Could you manage without pineapple on your pizza? In fact, could you manage without pizza? If you are following the 100-mile diet, these are just a few of the things that you will need to give up. The creation of Vancouver journalists Alisa Smith and J.B. (James) MacKinnon, the 100-mile diet is a way of eating that requires the consumption of food produced within 100 miles (160 km) of your home. If a food item was not produced close to your home, you cannot eat it.

2 For someone living in Vancouver, that means…

STOP!

In addition to coffee, chocolate, and pineapple, what other foods do you think someone living in Vancouver would need to give up? Write your guesses in the space below.

Note

Now continue reading.

… no bananas, since these are not grown in B.C. Likewise, bread is off-limits as bread is made of wheat, which is not grown near Vancouver. The lack of wheat also rules out pie, cookies, and pasta. Rice is a no-no, as is sugar. No sugar means no ice cream, cola, or candy. Fruits from hot climates are ruled out, so no orange juice is allowed. Since the diet requires the consumption of local foods, followers of the diet in Hawaii or Saskatchewan would have different options available to them.

The idea for the diet

3 Alisa and James came up with the idea for the diet one day at their vacation home, a dilapidated cabin in the largely uninhabited town of Dorreen on the Skeena River in northwestern B.C. They had guests visiting, and the only thing left to eat was a three-week-old cabbage. Since the closest store was a gruelling canoe trip away, going out to buy groceries was not an option. Instead, they improvised.

Figure $\PageIndex{1}$: *The Skeena River in northern British Columbia.*

STOP!

What foods do you think might have been available locally, without going to a grocery store? Write your guesses in the space below.

Note

Now continue reading.

4 One of the guests caught a large Dolly Varden char in the river. Another found several varieties of wild mushrooms in the woods. Growing on their property in a neglected vegetable garden were potatoes, garlic, and dandelions; their orchard yielded apples, cherries, and rosehips. They fried up all these ingredients in a pan and had a thoroughly delicious meal.

5 As journalists, Alisa and James were aware that many food items travel up to 3,000 miles (4,800 km) to reach Vancouver. They started to wonder whether living entirely on locally produced food would be possible. This would, they reasoned, be a way to both reduce their ecological footprint and to ensure the quality of the food they were eating. They decided to experiment, to see whether they could live for a year only on food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver apartment.

Figure $\PageIndex{2}$: *Many foods travel miles to reach B.C.*

Starting the diet

6 The couple first set some ground rules. They would stick to their 100-mile rule at home in Vancouver, but they would not worry about it if they were travelling. They also agreed to be flexible if they were invited to dinner at someone’s house, or if they had to eat out for business. They cleared out their pantry and started their experiment. When they cooked their first 100-mile meal, a dinner for four, they were shocked…

STOP!

Why do you think they were shocked? Write your guesses in the space below.

Note

Now continue reading.

… at how much it cost. All of their ingredients had been bought at specialty stores rather than the local supermarket, with the result that a single meal had cost a staggering $128.87. They wondered if the experiment would even be affordable.

Continuing

7 However, as time went on, Alisa and James got used to their new way of eating. As non-meat eaters, they were limited in what proteins they could eat now that chickpeas, lentils, and tofu were no longer on the menu, but they found alternatives. Fish was allowed, so they sourced prawns and clams from the Salish Sea. They drove or rode their bicycles out to the farmlands around Vancouver to buy local eggs, cheese, and nuts. They found a regular supplier of honey, which stood in for sugar. They experimented with vegetables from the Fraser Valley, mostly bought from farmers’ markets. They picked their own fruit. In time, they found that they were eating a more varied diet than ever before.

8 Their biggest challenge was that they could not buy…

STOP!

What was this food item that they missed so much? Write your guesses in the space below.

Note

Now continue reading.

… flour, which meant no bread. With no bread, both felt hungry, and both unintentionally lost weight. One day, when Alisa was craving a sandwich for lunch, James promised to make her one—and he did, using “bread” made out of turnips. They also found the experiment hard work, especially when it came to putting food away for the winter. They learned to can vegetables, they filled their freezer, and they despaired when a potato blight hit the Fraser Valley. Still, they persevered.

Spreading the word

9 A few months into their experiment, Alisa and James wrote an article for a local website called The Tyee. They were surprised at the number of like-minded people who responded; suddenly they felt like part of a community. Their popularity grew, and within a few months, invitations to attend conferences and give interviews were coming in. They travelled to meet other people across North America who were living close to the land.

STOP!

What happened at the end of the year? Did they continue? Did they go back to their old way of eating? Write your guesses in the space below.

Note

Now continue reading.

10 The year ended, and Alisa and James kept to their plan and continued to eat locally. They added a few items to their kitchen—lemons and rice, for example—but they did not bring back sugar or bananas. Their book, The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, was published in 2007 and spent 20 weeks on the Vancouver Sun’s bestseller list.

Source

Smith, A., & MacKinnon, J. B. (2007). The 100-Mile Diet: A year of local eating. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

Questions

A. Check Your Understanding

Answer the following questions in your own words.

1. Explain how the 100-mile diet works.

________________________________________________________________________

2. How did a visit to northwestern B.C. convince Alisa and James to try this diet?

________________________________________________________________________

3. What did Alisa and James find most difficult about the 100-mile diet?

________________________________________________________________________

4. Where did they buy their food?

________________________________________________________________________

5. Alisa and James thought the diet would be a good way to lose weight. True or false?

________________________________________________________________________

6. What did they find were the advantages of this way of eating? Choose all that are correct.

a) It’s healthier.

b) It’s cheaper.

c) It’s more varied.

d) It’s better for the environment.

B. Develop Your Vocabulary

Find a word in the reading that means the following. Paragraph numbers are given to help you.

1. the act of eating (para. 1) _________________________ (noun)

2. in poor condition, in ruins (para. 3) _________________________ (adjective)

3. physically very tiring (para. 3) _________________________ (adjective)

4. did something without planning (para. 3) _________________________ (verb)

5. ignored, not maintained (para. 4) _________________________ (adjective)

6. argued based on evidence (para. 5) _________________________ (verb)

7. environmental damage by one person (para. 5) _________________________ (noun)

8. shocking (para. 6) _________________________ (adjective)

9. without meaning to (para. 8) _________________________ (adverb)

10. did not give up trying (para. 8) _________________________ (verb)

Choose five of the words above. Write a sentence of your own using each word.

1. ________________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________________

3. ________________________________________________________________________

4. ________________________________________________________________________

5. ________________________________________________________________________

C. Think About It

Think about the following questions. Write your thoughts, or discuss your ideas with your class.

1. What can you guess from the reading about Alisa and James? What kind of people are they?

________________________________________________________________________

2. Would it be easy to follow the 100-mile diet where you live? What foods would someone in your local community need to give up? What foods are readily available?

________________________________________________________________________

3. What other things could people do to reduce their ecological footprint? Give some examples.

________________________________________________________________________

4. Would you personally like to try eating in this way? Why, or why not?

________________________________________________________________________

5. If you could meet Alisa or James, what question would you like to ask them?

________________________________________________________________________

Reading Skill: Predicting

What Is Predicting?

As you saw in Unit 1, you need to read actively and engage with the text. Predicting helps you to do this. Predicting means guessing what is going to come in the reading. You can predict what you are going to read about based on the knowledge you already have of the topic, on what you have already read, and on your own personal experiences. Predicting can happen both before you read and as you are in the process of reading.

Before you read

Whatever you are reading, don’t just jump in and start reading the first paragraph or the first sentence. Before you read anything, take a few minutes and look it over. Look at the title and any section headings. Look at any photographs, maps, diagrams, or other pictures. If you are reading a book, look at the table of contents. You should start to form an impression of what the text might be about.

As you read

As you work your way through a reading, try to guess what is coming—what is the author going to tell you next?

How Do I Do It?

As you were reading the article about the 100-mile diet, you predicted the answer to several questions. Undoubtedly, some of your predictions were correct. What did you base them on?

In addition to coffee, chocolate, and pineapple, what other foods do you think someone living in Vancouver would need to give up?

Did you base your predictions on your own knowledge of Vancouver and what food is produced there?

What foods do you think might have been available locally, without going to a grocery store?

Did you base your predictions on your knowledge of the Skeena River area, or perhaps of rural B.C. in general?

Why do you think they were shocked?

Did you use your knowledge of the foods available in B.C. to answer this question?

What was this food item that they missed so much?

Perhaps you based your prediction on your own food preferences. Maybe you guessed what you would miss if you followed this diet.

What happened at the end of the year? Did they continue? Did they go back to their old way of eating?

Maybe you used what you had learned in the reading to make this prediction. Maybe you had formed an impression of Alisa and James and what kind of people they are. Maybe you had realized that following this diet became easier as they became more accustomed to it.

As you can see, predictions are rarely based on nothing—they have their origins in what you already know. For this reason, predictions can be called “educated guesses.”

After you finish reading, don’t forget to check whether you predicted correctly. Don’t worry if you were wrong! When you are reading a work of fiction (a novel or short story), you may find that something happens that is completely unexpected. This is known as a twist in the story, and often this is a sign of expert storytelling.

You Try It!

The next reading in this unit, Eating Well on a Budget, asks you to predict what you are going to read about.