Awareness of food and sustainablity issues is beginning to increase as the horrors of the industrial food complex come to light. For some, the solution is to eat local. Have you heard of the 100 mile diet?  It is a great idea and as a chef, something that was second nature. Actually knowing who grew, raised or caught your food is a great way to get quality ingredients. You can ask the farmer if they use herbicides, the fisherman if it was line caught, or the poultry farmer what the chicken ate...But how do you apply it? Will you eat absolutely anything from within 100 miles? Beef or pork from feedlots, pesticide laced apples, industrially farmed salmon? And what about organic factories (you’ve heard the reports of ecoli on tomatoes and spinach) and year round organic asparagus (does mediocre asparagus really deserve a seat on a plane?
As 100 Mile Diet authors put it, you should work to sustain your own local economy and when you go outside of it, you should only buy things at the very highest level of quality. Fair trade, environmentally friendly, handmade, and it better be delicious. To quote James MacKinnon: "as far as I’m aware, no one in the local foods movement is suggesting that we all need to get all of our food from our local food systems: trade has always been a part of human culture. It’s a question of balance. Over the past few decades we’ve swung toward getting most of our food from increasingly distant sources, and as a result we’re eating worse food at a higher environmental and social cost, and have also lost a critical connection to the landscapes and communities we live in. Local eating is about correcting that imbalance - we eat first and foremost from the places we live in, and then look outward for certain fairly traded, environmentally sustainable goodies."

Andrey Durbach of Parkside Restaurant approaches these issues in an interesting manner. Here is an excerpt from an interview recently published in the Canadian paper, National Post.

Q: You’ve been described as being anti 100 mile diet. What is your opposition? And if the authors of the 100 Mile Diet came to dine at Parkside, what might you serve them?
A: If I have in my possession the most perfect peak-season heirloom tomatoes, vine ripened and picked that morning by the farmer, I'm eating them regardless of whether they come from 50, 101, or 300 miles away. Furthermore, I'm going to sprinkle them with Maldon salt, grind pepper on them, and douse them with Tuscan olive oil. I'm all for showing off our best local and regional products, of which there are many, but not being able to coax the best out of these ingredients by marrying them with the best products from elsewhere seems needlessly and pointlessly limiting, and against the best interests of the end consumer, and the producer, and in fact ultimately does a disservice to the products that we are meant to be promoting.  If I were a point-making-kinda-guy (which I guess I am) I would serve: zucchini blossoms filled with Dungeness crabmeat and San Marzano tomato fondue;  fillet of halibut with braised Polderside farms chicken wings and Parma ham; and millefeuille of rhubarb with poached Queen Anne cherries and vanilla bean bavarois.  Each of these dishes features local (100 mile), regional (Pacific northwest) and singular, special imported ingredients, all harmoniously matched, more than the sum of their parts.

  And the renowned farmer and author, Michael Ableman, argues passionately for a sustainable future in the following video.