Since having the gastric band put on my stomach last November, I’ve really been paying much more attention to food. Not that I didn’t always think about food before, but now that I can only eat small portions (make that REALLY small portions) I am careful to make sure that the food is fresh and nutritious. That brings me to the growing wave of people calling themselves “locavores”. I’m not a locavore yet, but I just might be one day soon.

A locavore is someone who is very concerned about all the miles food travels to get to them. It’s been said that most food travels 1500 miles from farm to plate and that’s a lot of gasoline and fumes adding to global warming. I love growing my own vegetables and in the past I’ve been very successful at making my own tomato sauce, ketchup and jams, plus freezing berries and the occasional green beans or corn. I have never considered only buying at the local farmer’s market.

Locavores say that their movement means improvement in the quality of the food they eat, less impact on the environment and the small local farmers get a big boost to stay in business. It all sounds good to me. I doubt I’ll ever be 100% locavore. I love mangos. The American part of me needs the occasional homesick food cure. I can say that I will do much more to support our local farmers because it just makes good sense to do it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.